Caretaker - L. A. Graf [73]
Janeway hesitated for only the instant it took any good commander to make the right decision. She couldn't lift Chakotay--could hardly carry Tuvok. The Indian couldn't save himself, or even help to save another. Her stomach clenched in frustrated anger.
A captain's duty had to be the path of least damage. Chakotay had a crew himself. He knew how it had to be.
Janeway nodded a silent promise to return for him if she could.
Then she hefted Tuvok a little higher in her arms, and continued backing awkwardly toward the exit she knew must be somewhere still above them.
A double staccato of running footsteps caught up with her while she was still edging around the bend. Not Ocampa authorities, she reassured herself as she doggedly kept dragging the wounded Vulcan. If someone was coming to stop them, they'd be coming from below, not above.
Still, she craned a look behind her, and a bobbing finger of light swept the wall and crossed her face just as a welcomely human-height silhouette coalesced out of the darkness to close with her.
She nodded Paris back toward the stairs, opening her mouth to explain, but he was past her without waiting to hear. As his flashlight's beam jittered out of sight around the corner, Janeway stopped Neelix from following by lifting her elbow into his path. "Help me with him," she ordered, jerking her chin down toward Tuvok. As if in response to her voice, the chamber around them bucked and trembled anew. Neelix's eyes flew wide, and he ducked hurriedly beneath one of the Vulcan's arms to take half of the weight. Janeway recognized the little alien's burst of speed as a sincere wish to get back out into the open, and found herself in complete sympathy with the sentiment.
She could only hope Paris had the sense to feel the same way.
* The tremor crashed through the tunnel like a tsunami, throwing Paris against one wall and showering broken rock onto his shoulders. He grabbed at the stair railing almost blindly--as if he could hold it still, or it could keep him from falling.
Instead, the ancient metal crumbled like sandstone at his touch, and Paris knew it was tearing away from its moorings even before Chakotay's voice shouted an angry Indian curse from somewhere down below, He tightened his grip on the rail, sliding onto his bottom in a search for traction on the cave-damp floor, and breathlessly willed the failing structure to hold just a few moments more. It disintegrated to powder inside his grasping fist.
Then, just as abruptly, the shaking stopped.
Paris fumbled for his flashlight, almost afraid to look. But the rhythmic creak and bang of swaying metal hinted that some part of the staircase still hung, and Paris had to be sure as long as there was still any chance of pulling this off. Climbing to his knees on the lip of the overhang, he directed the light toward where he knew the stairs ought to be.
They'd sagged a good two feet, and the top five runners were gone, but just enough of the structure remained to make it frighteningly clear how precariously it still clung to its mountings. Paris didn't even know how the hell it was staying suspended with most of the railing torn out of the wall.
Squinting against the light, Chakotay scowled up at Paris without releasing his white-knuckled grip on the stair beneath him. "Get out of here, Paris, before the whole thing comes down."
"I intend to." It was only a two-foot step. Not even a hop, even with the broken strutwork's swaying. "As soon as I get you up." Easy as falling off a log.
He made a face at himself as he edged his foot toward the first bobbing runner. Not real good imagery at the moment, Thomas old boy.
"You get on those stairs--" Chakotay stiffened as Paris's step rattled through the metal. "They'll collapse! We'll both die!"
Paris shrugged. "Yeah," he admitted. Every inch of his insides quivered as he slowly shifted