Caretaker (21 page)

Dust and ash with the flavor of salt hung suspended in the hot air like dirt in water. Covering Kim’s mouth with one hand to try and save the ensign’s breathing, Paris slapped his comm badge and looked toward the sky. “Paris to Voyager! Can you lock on to us now?”

Rollins’s voice sounded tinny and distant against the roaring wind.

“Affirmative. But I’m only reading five signals.”

Paris nodded, even though the conn officer couldn’t see him.

“The others are—” A burning flash of light tore past directly overhead, sundering his last words. As it struck the ground somewhere just below the horizon, Paris knew they should be glad it hadn’t landed right on top of them. Then the ground lurched like a mad animal beneath them, and Paris heard the terrifying crack and shatter of rock not so very far away. Shoving Kim into the dirt, he threw himself across the younger man to protect him with his own body, and a cloud of dirt roared out the newly made tunnel mouth behind them to bury them all.

Paris waited, his face buried against Kim’s back, until the rumble of falling stone finally wore itself out and faded away.

Even so, the distant echo of crumbling earth seemed to howl through the ground impossibly far below him. When he rolled to look behind, he half-expected to see their exit caved in with no hope of digging back past it. Instead, the opening stared back at him like a screaming mouth, and dust puffed out and upward in a weary cloud. He heard Kim groan, and realized that the ensign had turned, too, to view the desolation.

“Paris to Janeway.” The effort of speaking pulled tickles of particulate matter into his lungs, and he coughed against his hand as his listened for some reply. “Chakotay? Tuvok? Do you read?”

Pulling Kim to his feet as he stood, Paris decided to attribute the captain’s silence to damaged communicators, and the devil take anyone who said different.

“Voyager, prepare to transport everyone in this group except me.”

Neelix angled a disbelieving stare up at Paris as Paris passed Kim into his arms. “You’re not thinking of going back in there?”

It wasn’t a question deserving the dignity of a reply.

Backing away from the others, Paris picked up the flashlight Kes had left lying on the ground and tested to make sure it would still throw a beam. Not much of one, but better than absolute darkness. As he prepared to head back for the tunnel, he heard Neelix sigh explosively, and glanced up to see the little alien bob forward to touch his nose briefly to Kes’s.

“The fool needs company.” Neelix sighed with a shrug. He smiled into his beloved’s eyes. “Take care of them, dearest! I’ll see you later.”

She nodded mutely, gathering Kim and the Maquis close against her as Neelix gently fixed his own comm badge to her shift. Smiling, Paris tapped open a channel to the starship far above them.

“Voyager, make that three to beam up. Lock on to the other comm badge and energize.”

Neelix paused long enough to pat once more at Kes’s cheek; then the warbling tremolo of the transporter began to tingle the air around them. He danced away to join Paris before the beam could lock him in place, and Paris let him stay until the last sparkling atom had dissipated and carried Kes away. Then, impatient to be on his way, he clapped Neelix once on the arm as a signal to follow, and ducked back into the cave entrance with nothing but a dying flashlight to lead them.

Janeway woke up to darkness. Darkness that shook and rumbled like thunder, and smelled like moldy dirt. Slapping at the ground on all sides, her hand collided with a cold, ridged cylinder that nearly rolled beyond her reach before she could lock her hand around it and pull it into her lap. She recognized the shape and heft of it as soon as she had it in both hands—the flashlight Daggin’s people had given them on their way to these ancient tunnels. The tunnels were apparently feeling every moment of their years under the Array’s powerful assault.

Twisting the cylinder to activate it, she thanked whatever gods watched over starship captains when it sprayed a bright cone of light across the landing and down the flight of stairs she’d just stepped off of before the last loud explosion hit.

She found Tuvok first. He’d been directly behind her, his hand even touching her shoulder now and again in the darkness as they climbed, as though silently reassuring himself of both her presence and her nearness in the almost total dark. Now, he lay facedown on the metal staircase, a spray of green blood glistening on the steps and wall beside him. Swallowing her heart as she worked her way down to him, she pressed shaking fingers to his throat and held her breath as though that would help the security officer to breathe instead.

The quick hammer of his pulse against her hand made her dizzy with relief. That was one of the other good things about Vulcans, she thought as she took up his arms to drag him off the rickety stairs and onto the more solid rock landing. They were as reliable as antigravs, and nearly as hard to disable. If she could just get him out of here and back onto Voyager, he would no doubt be peering at her with his usual hint of Vulcan superiority before the end of the day. I hope to give you that chance, old friend.

Something moved farther back in the darkness as the flashlight beam played across the steps almost a full level below. Janeway froze, Tuvok’s weight pulling at her arms, and Chakotay raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light now focused directly on him. His angular face was twisted with pain.

“I can’t move,” he called up, waving the captain away. Or maybe just the light. She couldn’t tell. “My leg’s broken.” For a moment it seemed like he might say something more, but then his eyes just locked on hers and he was silent.

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 his weight forward. “On the other hand, if I save your butt, your life will belong to me.” He flashed the most annoying grin he could muster. “Isn’t that some Indian custom?”

The pain in his expression only made Chakotay’s glower more fierce.

“Wrong tribe.”

“I don’t believe you.” Paris lifted his back foot, and he was suddenly committed to the rescue. A frantic voice in the back of his head started whispering for him to hurry. He tried to chase the sound of it away with more familiar sarcasm. “I think you’d rather die than let me be the one to rescue you.”

Something cracked loudly in the wall at Paris’s knee, and the stairs dropped abruptly. They slammed to an uneven stop, as though caught by some invisible hand. Paris did his best to dig his fingers into the wall as he started stiffly down the steps again.

“Fine. Be a fool.” But Chakotay’s voice sounded as hoarse with pain as Paris’s felt. “If I have to die, at least I’ll have the pleasure of watching you go with me.”

And if I die, Paris thought as he slipped carefully into position beside the big Maquis, I get the pleasure of knowing I was finally doing something right. He planted his feet as firmly as he could on the rocking structure, and hauled Chakotay onto his shoulders with an exaggerated grunt. The Indian’s cry of pain was real, Paris knew. He felt an unexpected spasm of guilt for not having the chance to be more careful.

Turning slowly to start his upward climb, he asked glibly, “Isn’t there some Indian trick where you can turn yourself into a bird and fly us out of here?”

“You’re too heavy.”

Well, it had been worth asking.

Paris tried not to pay attention to the stairs’ screeching groans, and tried not to notice the long, empty depth of blackness stretching down into infinity just a misstep to his right. He only lifted his foot, placed it, pushed smoothly upward, and lifted his foot again. For some reason, he had this silly idea that if he didn’t jolt the stairs, didn’t make any jerky movements, he’d be able to float his way up to the top as though he weren’t placing two human males’ worth of weight on every weakened step. As it was, when he drew near the top of the dangling stair, he was startled to find Janeway leaning down to grab his hand and lead him across the last dizzying gap. His face blazed hot with embarrassment. She’s gonna be pissed, he told himself, avoiding her gaze. No way she’s gonna like me playing hero just for the sake of my stupid pride. But he let her pull him to safety in dutiful silence, and even pretended his insides didn’t go to water when he heard the staircase crash into wreckage behind him.

When she kept her hand locked on his elbow all the way up to the surface, Paris almost thought it was possessive relief he read in her determined features. But maybe that was just his imagination.

No decision track existed to deal with inappropriate overcrowding of the sickbay facilities by nondamaged ship’s personnel. The holographic medical interface had attempted 7,837 different paths since the away team’s return to the ship and returned to the same conclusion. Primary Function Control circuits logged this as an unacceptable programming contingency, and the Self-Maintenance Routine established a new priority in its restructure queue.

Before 0800 the next morning, there would be a decision tree allowing the medical program access to activities designed to bypass the ship’s organic control device in matters concerning crew health and safety.

When that collection of Decision Tracks had been instated, the holographic interface would be capable of banishing all fully functional organic life from its sickbay so that it could effect more efficient repairs on damaged members of the crew. It flagged an automatic reminder to order everyone now present to leave as soon as the system made it capable.

Sensors indicated acceptable reduction in oncological reproduction in the cellular structures of Patients #2 and #4.

Patient #1—Visual Recognition Matrix 521, “Lieutenant Tuvok”—had successfully completed a vascular repair and dermal fusion regimen, and was removed from the treatment queue. On the examination table currently positioned in front of the holographic interface’s primary projection location, Patient #3 persisted in moving erratically as attempts were made to complete a primary long-bone regenesis. Decision Track 333 required restraining the patient until unconsciousness rendered the patient immobile; Decision Track 1700 performed an override, and instead the holographic interface produced an expression of acerbic displeasure designed to secure the patient’s cooperation in his own treatment. Patient #3 displayed no discernible reaction to this expression.