Ghost of a Chance (20 page)

“My Klingon blood, I guess.” She looked at him and smiled. “And my human heart.”

Chakotay couldn’t help but smile back. Torres often came to him for guidance, yet this time he had been the one in need. He looked at her with subtle admiration. He wanted to say something, but a simple thank-you would not have sufficed.

“B’Elanna,” he said, “who we are is sometimes our greatest weakness, but it also can be our greatest strength.”

The lieutenant said nothing for a moment, but Chakotay knew even before she nodded that she understood.

“Commander,” Stephens said, indicating the main viewscreen. “The Televek are trying to hail us again.”

“I’ll bet they’re not too happy,” Paris said.

“I’ll bet their friends in that fleet of cruisers heading our way won’t be very happy when they get here, either,” Rollins added.

Chakotay frowned. “Any change in the planet’s status?”

“It’s churning in the continental region again, Commander,” Ensign Stephens reported crisply. “Major eruptions from numerous active volcanoes, and quakes everywhere, offshore as well.”

“How bad?”

“I can’t get a clear enough reading, but I think this is the worst we’ve seen since our arrival.”

Chakotay stood utterly silent as he considered his next move. He took a deep breath. “Go to red alert. Target weapons.

Transporter room, can you get a fix on the away team?”

“I’ve been trying, sir,” Hoffman said over the comm. “I’ve located three signals that I think may be them, but I’ve been unable to make a positive ID, and I can’t get a good lock. We’re still fighting an ocean of interference down there. Those could be Drenarians, or even Televek for all I know. I’m sorry, Commander.”

“Understood. Mr. Rollins, you have the bridge. Keep those photon torpedoes trained on that cruiser. I’ll be in the transporter room.

B’Elanna,” he added wryly, already headed off the bridge, “get back to work.”

The turbolift door closed just in time.

***

Drenar Four was coming apart. Tuvok felt the quake approaching, but he was ill prepared for the violence it contained when it fully arrived.

Even after bracing himself, feet apart, hands pressed against the console and bulkhead, he was quickly knocked away from all supportive surfaces, then thrown down to the hard deck. He crept along the moving floor, eyes unable to focus as the vibrations increased further still.

The ground beneath the shuttle heaved, tossing him upward. He tried to stay as limp as possible, aware that nothing quite facilitated the breaking of bones like rigid muscles, but the first impact point proved to be the side of his head. Which, fortunately, did not give very much. He watched the deck charge up to greet him yet again. Then the shaking returned.

A brief quieting of the shock waves allowed him to distinguish between up and down. He ached in numerous places, but nothing hurt enough to suggest a critical injury. Getting his wind back, he scrambled straight under the main console just in front of the pilot’s chair, the only place inside the shuttle where he thought he might stand a chance of wedging himself in firmly enough to stay put.

A second series of shock waves arrived, more brutal than any Tuvok had ever experienced, but this time he did not take flight.

He felt the entire shuttle move once more, bouncing its way perhaps a meter or two to the west. Then it held, shaking with the rest of the world but tipping up sharply at the bow, as if pointing toward the heavens from which it had descended. A moment later the shaking suddenly stopped, leaving an all-encompassing silence inside the small compartment.

Tuvok slowly extracted himself from his twisted position on the floor and tried to stand up. One knee cracked and made him wince. His head swam for a moment, and he felt a sizable shoulder bruise announce itself as he tried to lift his arms.

All in all, however, as he attempted to work the worst of the kinks out, he considered himself fortunate. He turned toward the main console and tried to bring up the power. Everything was out again.

Back to basics, he thought. It took several minutes to find the ruptured feed, and several more to patch it back together. Next he made use of the probe the Televek had supplied, a crude but effective instrument. Within minutes he had restored power to half of the systems on the shuttle. But as he moved on to his first priority, the communications system, he realized there was no hope of repairing it.

That entire section of the console was split in two, from the instrument panel to the deck, and many of its components had been ruined.

Tuvok let a long, grim, illogical sigh seep out before he took a fresh breath and turned to his second challenge: the transporter system. The damage to this portion of the main control panel was minimal, but he couldn’t get the controls to respond, leading him to suspect trouble with the transporter itself. He started toward the stern of the shuttle, clinging to anything he could find in order to keep from tumbling straight into the rear hatch.

Beginning just moments from now there would be a series of aftershocks, if not another full quake. He expected things would only get worse.

And the Televek might return at any moment.

Time was short.

Tuvok saw no logic in pessimistic speculation, but he could not help acknowledging the grim status of the mission, and his aspect of it in particular.

Then he set aside his doubts, quickly and efficiently. “I will work faster,” he said out loud, as if Drenar Four itself could hear. He censored himself, then executed a controlled tumble into the aft compartment. He went to work precisely where he landed.

***

Phaser fire lit up the darkened woods and sent clouds of burning bark and hissing splinters into the air as errant shots struck the trunks of trees. Janeway and Kim stopped running momentarily to return fire, and to watch the pursuing Televek dive for cover.

They stayed pinned down for only a moment.

Slowly, first one, then another of the aliens began to turn out in a flanking maneuver, crawling for the most part, heads down.

The undergrowth was just thick enough so that Janeway couldn’t get a clear shot. Finally she signaled Kim to fall back again, the only thing they could do to avoid getting caught in Televek crossfire.

Once they had scurried far enough away to risk it, they stood nearly upright, then ran as fast as the tangle of green and brown would allow.

The footing grew especially treacherous in places.

Janeway was stepping over a small boulder and glancing over her shoulder when she heard Kim shout into her ear.

In almost the same instant she felt him hit her hard in the side, tackle style, knocking her off her feet. She lay there, face in the dirt for an instant, then got her arms under her and lifted her head up. She heaved air into her empty lungs, filling them back up. As she shook off the daze from the fall, she understood.

The earth here was split, partly a result of the natural roll of the landscape, though in this place there was clear evidence of recent changes brought about by the quakes. A great chasm cut through the forest from left to right, it was no more than two meters wide but too deep and too shadowed to allow sight to penetrate. Turned around, checking for their pursuers, Janeway had nearly stumbled into it. Kim had been more observant and had acted quickly. He had saved her life.

“Thanks,” she said.

Kim’s grin was feeble but sincere. “You’re welcome, Captain.”

“We’ll have to jump over it,” she said. After allowing Kim to help her to her feet, she collected her hand phaser, and then they both stood back a few paces and broke into another sprint.

They cleared the empty distance easily enough, but no sooner had they rolled up and gotten to their feet than they were forced to drop as the heat of a phaser beam passed between them. The Televek had found them again.

“Keep moving,” Janeway snapped, starting off once more. “Fire over your shoulder. Watch where you’re—” Before she could finish, the ground began to rumble. Then it shook with an all too familiar tremor.

Janeway grabbed the nearest tree only to find it suddenly being uprooted as a fresh, jagged fissure appeared from nowhere, crossing the forest floor right beneath her, racing to join the one they had just jumped across. She heard Kim yelling to her again.

“I know!” she shouted, letting go, leaping backward. The underbrush dug at her back when she landed. This time, though, it was she who helped Kim to his feet as the tremors momentarily subsided—but did not end. A fresh wave was already beginning.

Janeway glanced back. She could see two of the Televek getting up, looking for their quarry as they got their bearings again.

One of them spotted the two Federation uniforms right away.

“They’re still coming,” she said, tugging at Kim’s silt-covered uniform sleeve.

“So we’re still going,” he replied, wasting no time in complying.

As they leaped the new ravine, the quakes reintensified, sending the far edge of the gap straight up half a meter, just as they landed on it. They rose with the land, shins bruised, momentum carrying them forward, and tumbled helplessly down the other side, then down again as they reached a wide natural gully.

Janeway saw Kim trying to grab ahold of the trees and scrub; she was already trying to do the same, but the intensifying shock waves emanating from beneath them made every target a moving one.

The world was “shaking and undulating like a storm-tossed sea.

Both officers plunged downward until a pair of massive fallen trees blocked their path. As they slammed into the smooth bark, the quake abruptly ended, as if a great hand had reached out and stilled all motion.

“Captain, are you still all right?” Kim asked, groaning heavily as he spoke the words, trying to get up again. He closed both eyes and flinched as he attempted to straighten his back; then he moaned again.

“I think so,” Janeway answered, making a face she thought nearly matched Kim’s as she tried to get her own legs underneath her.

Winds were building now, shifting, as if a great storm was approaching, but the thickening gray clouds that filled the sky were not from any weather system, Janeway was certain of that.

Soon volcanic ash would begin to fall from them, blanketing everything, eventually smothering all the life in this region, even if the world itself managed to survive.

“Maybe those Televek fell into that new crevice,” Kim said wistfully.

As his words joined the gusting winds they were made mute by another phaser blast. Kim cried out, then fell, clutching his right leg.

“You’re hit!” Janeway shouted, snatching at the ensign’s uniform.

She raised her weapon and fired in the direction of the attack without looking up, concerned primarily with Kim’s condition, and with getting him to cover. The apex where the fallen trees crossed stood more than three meters tall, and the trees themselves were nearly that thick as well.

Janeway managed to move along the massive trunk of one fallen tree, pulling Kim with her until they reached a spot where the trunk was only a meter high. Here Janeway propped Kim up, then heaved him over the tree bole. She fired again, then scrambled over the trunk after him.

She got the ensign sitting up, then poked her head up enough to find a target, and fired over the top of the trunk. She was forced to duck again as several Televek weapons fired back.

Great chunks of wood were torn away as the phaser blasts gouged them out. Bits and pieces of wood and bark showered down on Janeway and Kim. They huddled still lower. “How is it?” she asked, trying to examine the phaser burn.

“I don’t think they’ve finished me yet, but it doesn’t feel very good,” he confessed. The young officer seemed lucid enough, if less than chipper. He was holding his leg still, taking deep breaths, and looking up at her as if this was somehow his own fault.

“I didn’t ask you to play human shield for me,” she told him.

“But I appreciate the gesture.”

Kim smiled at this, nearly erasing the lines of pain from his face for just a moment. Janeway recognized the consequences of the sudden lull in incoming fire. She rose up slightly and fired back once more, trying to find real targets this time. The Televek were lying along the upper edge of the gully, but she couldn’t tell exactly where. It didn’t matter, she was certain they wouldn’t stay put for long.

She saw two heads pop up, and then two energy weapons fired. She decided to duck rather than take a shot, instincts screaming, and found it had been the right decision as the part of the tree trunk vanished in a wet hail of steaming, exploding tree fibers exactly where her face had been.

“These trees will be vapor in a few minutes,” she said. “Do you think you can still walk?”

Kim tried to move the injured leg. She watched as pain turned his features into twisted disarray. She checked her own phaser and noted that the charge was nearly depleted. Kim’s weapon would have more charge, but not much more.

“Our situation doesn’t look good, does it, Captain?” Kim wheezed, trying to get comfortable, though that was clearly impossible.

Janeway knew that he relied upon her for courage and guidance at least as much as any other member of her crew. She wanted to tell him she had a plan, that they would get out of this mess, that everything was going to be all right, but as she thought the situation over, she decided that Kim deserved to hear it straight.

Another round of phaser fire landed, burning so much of the tree trunk away that they were forced to move more than half a meter to one side.

She looked at him as they settled again. She had all the rhetoric memorized, especially the part about all of the cadets knowing when they joined the Academy that they might one day be called to put their lives on the line, but that speech wouldn’t suffice either. She had given most of her life to Starfleet, but she couldn’t go out quoting dogma.

“Kim, I want you to know—” “Captain!” Kim shouted, staring past her.

An unnatural ringing sounded in her ear, and a bright glowing cloud assaulted her eyes as she turned around. The sudden mixture of alarm and revelation that followed nearly caused her to cry out. Then she watched Tuvok materialize just inches from her. He wore one of the shuttle’s transporter armbands on his left arm and carried two identical bands and a tricorder in his hands.