The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [24]
Jhamel!
He beat back his fear. Think, Shran, think. The Orions had her now, along with Uzaveh-only-knew how many others. They could already have been under way at high warp for hours now, and might be anywhere in the sector, or maybe even farther away than that.
And that zhavey-less coward Theras ran instead of standing up to defend her.
His rage rekindled, Shran struggled into a sitting position and tried to haul himself to his feet. Nothing seemed broken, but he was frustrated by his inability to get his studded boots underneath him as his knees and elbows ineffectually sought purchase on the glassy ice on which he lay. He sighed in frustration, his breath curling upward like coolant leaking from an overheating warp core.
I have to get back to surface. Back to the ship. Find their trail before it grows as cold as this cavern.
After making another failed attempt to stand, he noticed that the darkness was beginning to give way to a diffuse, amber light. His antennae twitched, responding to what felt like someone’s physical presence, which he’d somehow not noticed before now. The ice shifted behind him, and Shran craned his neck toward the sudden cracking sound.
Something grasped him firmly by the shoulders, and a disembodied voice inside his head shouted, “Move!”
A flurry of hot hailstones came down around him, scorching his jacket and trousers wherever they touched him. One of the thumb-sized, glowing objects landed momentarily on the back of his right hand, and he flipped it away onto the ice with a strangled cry of agony.
Ice borers, Shran thought, watching the slow rain of the tiny creatures, which was illuminated very faintly by the energy of their own heat-generating bodies. He recalled how he’d once been badly burned by the very same type of subterranean grubs during his youth. Ice borers provided the people of Andoria with a great deal of usable heat, but they also posed a serious hazard to anyone unfortunate enough to be directly beneath them when they chose to make a vertical downward passage through a mass of ice.
The patter of the small, incendiary bodies quickly slowed and stopped, leaving only a shotgun scattering of faintly glowing holes in the floor and ceiling of the cavern as the light levels quickly receded to stygian darkness.
That darkness concealed the identity of whoever had just dragged Shran to safety. “Are you injured, Commander Shran?”
“It’s just plain Shran now. And I’ve been in far worse shape than this.” Shran cradled his burned hand before him as his rescuer attempted to help him get up on his feet.
“Thank Uzaveh I managed to find you.”
Well, at least I know he’s not one of the Orions, Shran thought. He leaned against his benefactor as he experimented with putting his full weight on both of his feet simultaneously.
“Who are you?” Shran wanted to know.
“It’s me,” said the voice inside his head. “Theras.”
Shran found it difficult to rein in the contempt that surged through his soul at that moment. His instinct was to push the coward as far away from him as possible, but he restrained himself, not eager to risk taking another awkward tumble into the icy darkness.
“Theras. I thought you had run away.”
“I ran to find you.”
“Stop speaking inside my mind, Theras,” Shran said, his words as sharp as flechettes. Only Jhamel had his leave to take such intimate liberties.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” Theras said, his voice sounding hoarse as though from long periods of disuse.
“I’m not the one you owe an apology to, Theras. Jhamel was captured because you decided to run instead of staying to help her.”
Theras’s voice took on a pleading tone that Shran found quite hard to distinguish