Taking Wing - Michael A. Martin [98]
In the corridors leading away from the first chamber, Keru and Rriarr found only unconscious or dead Reman prisoners and Romulan guards. As they neared the entrance to the second chamber, Keru felt his already-elevated adrenaline levels beginning to peak. I’m probably going to need anesthezine to get to sleep tonight, he thought. Assuming I manage to make it back to Titan.
Weapons at the ready, the pair burst into the final darkened room, firing at the first Reman prisoners that appeared on their night-vision displays. As the rioters began to fall under their phaser barrage, Keru saw a huge, battle-scarred Reman standing beside a shabbily dressed, dark-skinned Romulan on the far side of the ragtag cluster of escapees. Keru also quickly gathered from the Romulan’s actions and appearance that he was working with the Remans, a fellow prisoner rather than a captured prison guard.
“Hold fire!” Keru said to Rriarr as they both sought cover behind a stone pillar.
He shouted over the return fire, and the aggressive shouts of the Remans. “Commander Tuvok?”
A moment later, the Remans quit firing. “Who are you?” The voice that filled the sudden silence was shaky and hoarse, but clearly had not come from a gravel-throated Reman.
Still hunkering behind the pillar beside Rriarr, Keru quickly considered his options. No one at the prison knew that they were Starfleet officers, but to gain Tuvok’s cooperation, he knew he was going to have to reveal that fact. He hoped that decision wouldn’t come back to haunt him.
“I’m Lieutenant Commander Ranul Keru, U.S.S. Titan,” he said. “I’m here to extract you, and I’m running out of time.”
“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