Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [19]
Now that the question was asked, he steeled himself to listen, to remember a long sermon, the kind his grandfather used to lay on him when there was some lesson to be learned or some grave social gaff to be corrected. All the way home from wherever they were, talk, talk, talk, preach, preach, preach.
And that was why he was surprised. As sunlight broke through above his face and the snow was scraped away from the cockpit’s canopy, as he saw the faces of Poijana soldiers peel back the rocks and crud from his Starfleet coffin, Stiles absorbed Spock’s final word. Only one word… it echoed and echoed, rolled and settled, it chimed a resonant bell tone. He would hear it for the rest of his life. “Relax.”
Chapter Four
HARD TO BREATHE. STUFFY.
Metal banging against metal. The whine of mechanical treads. Lower pitch than the aircraft. A hatch breaking open-and Stiles fell inelegantly forward and landed on a stone floor.
His head throbbed, his left shoulder and arm ached… at least the paramedics, or whatever they were, had bandaged the arm before stuffing him into the brig box on their plane. He’d thought it might’ve been broken, but it wasn’t. His shoulder had been jammed into the side of the cockpit, numbing his whole arm. They’d given him a drug he thought might be poison, but turned out only to be a pain pill. For some reason, probably leverage, they didn’t want him dead. Not yet.
Now he was here. He knew a prison cell when he saw one. Unlike Starfleet’s fancy bright brigs, this one just had the old~ fashioned titanium bars. Sure. Why use expensive energy beams to hold prisoners in when plain metal would do the same job and couldn’t be shorted out?
Pressing his right hand to the stone floor, Stiles pushed himself from his knees to a sitting position. Tile, not stone. Big squares of rough-glazed tile. What was it his mother had called that color? Terra cotta.
Over his shoulder, the oval door or hatch or whatever it was that he’d come through clanked shut and barked loudly as it was locked from outside. Nobody had talked to him, nobody had counseled or advised him, nobody had told him what was going on or how long he would be here, or what the legal process would be. Did the Pojjans even have a legal process? How much of a coup was going on here? Was there a government in place at all?
Ashamed of his failure to do simple mission homework, Stiles realized he had no idea what to expect or any way to judge what had happened to him. The Pojjan soldiers had pulled him off the top of the mountain, bandaged his arm, put some kind of scanner over him, flown him back and dumped him into this cell. Was this a prison? Or just a holding cell? Would he be here for six months, or moved to a trial, a sentence, a hotel room’?
“I’m not a criminal,” he murmured, trying to sort all this out. “Not a rebel or terrorist… so what am I?”
With notable effort, he stood up on shaky legs. His head throbbed relentlessly. The cell was dry at least, and warm enough. Well, at least they weren’t barbarians. And there was light. Not much-enough to see by, not enough to disturb sleep. All the lights were outside his cell, beyond the titanium bars. Probably they had learned that light fixtures could be cannibalized into lock-blowing bombs. He remembered that from the Academy alternative-energy course. A bunk and mattress, a woolly blanket, a toilet, a sink.
“Welcome to Alcatraz,” he grumbled with a sigh. “Hope they feed me.” “You’ll be fed.” Stiles flinched back a step. His heart drummed. “Who’s talking?” he yelped. “Where are you?” “In the next cell.”
Stiles pressed against the bars, trying to see, but the cells were side by side and there was no doing it. The bars were cold against his cheek. “Are you a prisoner?’ he asked. “Seems obvious.”
A male voice. Sounded young. Not old, anyway. Sounded like it could be one of his own team. “Are you a criminal?” “My incarceration is political.”
“Political