Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [27]
She felt ahead with her foot. Soft earth. She began to work her way forward. The glow grew larger, visible as a curving stone passage, still many meters away.
Her shoulder nudged against a rocky protuberance. Unable to bring her cuffed hands up to steady herself, she leaned sideways against the rock. As her cheek touched it, she perceived that the rock had a peculiar texture. Leathery and pliant.
The object moved jerkily, and Troi lost her balance and fell to the ground. She heard a flapping sound and felt air moving. The flapping sound rose and moved about behind and above her, now audibly closer, now farther.
Worried that she might be in danger, she tried to sense consciousness but could discern only the most basic level of animal awareness. And more than one. There were several creatures flying around in the darkness, perhaps using echolocation to navigate, Troi mused.
She rose to her feet and moved urgently toward the light and the passage. The sound of the animals in the air behind her grew fainter and disappeared by the time she reached her destination.
The passage looked as though it had been deliberately hewn, like a mine tunnel. The faint orange light was coming from around a sharp bend. Troi moved toward the light, and turning the corner, found herself looking into an immense natural cavern. It showed her a diminishing perspective as it curved down from view in the distance.
On the floor directly ahead lay an underground lake. Droplets fell sporadically from stalactites on the ceiling. Peach-colored light emanated from grottos on the floor.
Troi walked forward into the cavern, until she came to one of the sources of light. It was a small, naturally glowing object, a rock.
Its orange-pink light had a calming effect on her. She became aware of her fatigue and sat on the sand near the pool, her manacled hands behind her.
The cavern matched the one described in a diagram she’d seen before beamdown: long, fairly straight, passing directly under the ore factory. It would lead most of the way to the area under the CephCom complex. But the away team had not known the specifics of the layout for the last three kilometers of that route. They would have explored it as they went.
If she attempted it herself and successfully entered CephCom through its underbelly, she’d still have to covertly locate the captain and a communicator for contacting the Enterprise. No way to know if Riker and Data were being held there, too. But if they were … hadn’t Amoret implied something about capital punishment for those who violated the anti-imagination laws?
She looked at the situation as calmly as she could, and had to conclude that it was hopeless.
She thought of how she had sometimes told others that the boundaries of one’s capabilities are self-imposed. She’d just have to push herself beyond her own limits. The counselor would have to counsel herself.
She was more determined than ever to discover the connection between the Other-worlders and Crichton. “He is now aware of life alien to himself,” the Mirror Man had said. She wasn’t sure if this meant Crichton knew specifically about the Other-worlders—but he certainly carried a secret. And it was the only handle she had. She decided her best course was to deduce all she could about Crichton and the Other-worlders before her arrival at CephCom. Then, if she failed to find a communicator and beam up with the captain, she would confront Crichton and learn what she could.
She summoned the energy to get up and work on freeing her hands from the cuffs.
Then her empathic sense made her aware of an approaching human. She quickly stood and looked about.
A small, disheveled man was walking toward her.
As he came closer she noticed the soiled rags which swathed his body, the dirt ingrained in his skin, and finally, when he was standing in front of her, his muddy, mildew-laden smell.
“And