The Folded World (22 page)

The Romulans went past the hatchway. She willed them to keep going. At first they did; she could hear them lumbering, heavy in their battle gear. But after a few minutes they seemed to understand that she wasn't ahead of them, and they doubled back.

She was on her stomach, beneath whatever the unidentified objects were. The floor was slick with grease, and she slid farther back. Terror once again gnawed at her, the fear of the dark, of being alone. She was locked in a small space with someone dangerous outside it, and that was at once familiar and horrifying. She knew that fear had to come from somewhere, but along with most of the details of her situation, the source was lost to her.

Tikolo didn't mind, at the moment. She was
certain that if she could remember what spurred the borderline panic she felt, it would escalate into the full-blown variety. She gripped her phaser in both hands, wishing they would stop trembling. She had it pointed toward where she thought the door was, but in the dark, slipping and sliding beneath low-hanging pipes, she could no longer be entirely sure of its location.

It didn't matter that much. If anyone came in, she would see the light. Her target would be outlined against it, while she would be firing from a protected place, and closer to the ground than anyone would expect. At least the first few Romulans would die before they pinpointed her.

From the other side of the little hatch, she could hear voices, the sounds of armed soldiers. They had stopped beside the hatchway for a conference, it seemed. Tikolo wished they would move away. Her legs were starting to cramp from being wedged in, and the smell of the lubricant was getting to her. She didn't like dark, enclosed spaces, she realized, didn't like them at all. And if she didn't get out of here soon, she was going to explode.

In the distance, she heard a new voice. Another Romulan, she supposed. But the Romulans outside hushed, and it was apparent that they were listening with as much interest as she was. The voice came again, echoing down the hallways. This time, she was
able to make out words. “Captain Kirk!” it called. “Mister Spock! Doctor McCoy!”

Bunker,
she thought.
I don't know how I know it, but that voice belongs to Bunker.

And Bunker was about to walk into a very bad spot.

Kirk was pleasantly surprised at the bond Spock seemed to have formed with the Ixtoldan Aleshia.
Well, not really an Ixtoldan anymore,
he reasoned. A bundle of electricity without form or substance, but retaining, it seemed, at least some of what had comprised her in life. He found it hard to imagine the horror of being one of the last ones on this ship, watching those around you go mad and die. He'd had a taste of it, as a boy on Tarsus IV. The situations weren't quite the same—he had survived, after all, and so had a small handful of others. But there had been long hours when he hadn't expected that he would, when it seemed that the universe itself was coming to an end.

Since then, he had learned that death could do that. The universe—the
universes
—went on, oblivious to the lives and deaths of those within. A callous way for universes to behave, perhaps, but there it was. He liked to think that people would miss him, if the worst were to happen. People, maybe even the beings who made up Starfleet, or the Federation. Beyond that, however, the Earth would continue to spin, to carve
its usual path through the Sol system. Starfleet would continue, and someone else would be made a captain and would command his ship. The Federation's efforts would go on. In the greater scheme, one individual more or less hardly mattered.

But on a more personal level, they all mattered. Everybody had someone who cared about them, someone whose day was brightened by seeing the other coming. He thought about Miranda Tikolo, who had been so isolated while the Romulans destroyed Earth Outpost 4 and all the people with whom she had served. Maybe she'd had a lover on that outpost; she was an attractive and vital woman. She had been scarred by the experience, the trauma working deep into her subconscious like a sliver under a fingernail. You couldn't just grab it and yank it; it took work to ease it out. She had been working with McCoy, trying to heal herself. The doctor had believed she was making good progress. As her captain, Kirk's concern was that she pull her weight, and remain mentally and emotionally fit for duty, and she had.

Now, if their theory was correct, her deeply buried trauma was putting everybody at risk. None of it was her fault; he had been a mess after Tarsus IV, too. If he hadn't had the calming presence of Uncle Frank and that summer on the farm, who knew what kind of disaster his life would have become? He empathized with Tikolo. He wanted to put a stop to the seemingly endless stream of Romulans attacking them, but if at
all possible he wanted it done in a manner that didn't mean hurting her. If it became a question of her life weighted against the lives of the rest of the crew, then he would be the first to pull the trigger. But Kirk knew that if he did, he would always regret it, always feel that there must have been one more thing he could have tried, one more idea that might have saved her.

“Jim?” McCoy said.

“Yes, Bones?”

“How much time do you think we have left?”

“Until?”

“You heard Spock. Either we find a way off this ship or we all die.”

“You're not suggesting that we leave anybody behind.”

Anger flashed across McCoy's face. “Of course not! I'm just saying we'd better find those people in a hurry.”

“We've been doing what we can. We'll continue to.”

“Have we?”

Kirk was confused by the question. “You tell me, Bones. If there's something I haven't been doing, I'd like to know.”

“Nothing against what we've tried, Jim. But now we know something we didn't before.”

“What's that?”

“Spock's girlfriend. She's part of the ship's group-mind.”

“Right. But where does that get us?”

“If they're all over the ship—and I think they are; I haven't felt like we've been alone for a minute—then some of them must know where the rest of our people are. If she can locate them for us . . .”

Kirk clapped McCoy on both shoulders. “Bones, you're a genius. Spock!”

Spock had been examining the remnants of what might have been a computer system. The lower decks, it turned out, had their own bunkrooms. They'd been tight, crowded quarters, with bunks stacked four high and accessed by ladders, strengthening Kirk's suspicion that there had been a rigid class system on Ixtolde, or else on Ixtolde VII—more likely the latter, since they had built the ship. Those who maintained the big engines required to move the enormous vessel through space and keep it habitable might have spent their lives down here, largely away from the denizens of the roomier, slightly more comfortable decks above.

At Kirk's call, the first officer came over. The captain filled him in on McCoy's idea. Spock's right eyebrow arched as he listened. “I can try,” he said when Kirk was done. “Aleshia, are you here? Can you hear me?”

Kirk caught himself watching and listening for a response, and had to remind himself that those senses wouldn't help. But he saw a half-smile illuminate Spock's features, and he guessed that Aleshia had answered.

“We are looking for others like us,” Spock said.
“In uniforms like ours. Humans, like these men and women. Their names are—”

“Bunker and Tikolo,” Kirk filled in. “And Greene, Chandler, Ruiz, and Vandella. Two women, four men. If you can hear me—”

“She hears you.”

“We need to find them, as quickly as we can. Before anything happens to them. You understand that, don't you?”

“She does,” Spock said. “She is searching.”

They stood there for long minutes. Spock's head was cocked at a slight angle, as if he were listening to a distant sound. Kirk wanted to urge Aleshia to hurry, but at the same time he had to trust Spock. The Vulcan was the only one who knew her, if that word could even be applied.

“She has located them,” Spock finally said. “But they are in danger. This way, quickly.” He started back the way they had just come from. Kirk hoped this didn't turn out to be a bad idea. Could Aleshia be trusted? Could Spock even be certain that this disembodied presence was the same one he had communicated with earlier? And was there a possibility, however remote, that everything Spock had told them—the whole tale of the two Ixtoldes, the invasion of the planet, the century ship that the original Ixtoldans were banished on—was a lie? Or worse, Spock's own hallucination? He could have been driven mad as easily as anyone else, couldn't he?

Now they were dashing through the hall, climbing a ladder, passing through a hatchway onto another deck. Kirk didn't remember having seen this one, though he wasn't sure how they could have skipped it. But on a ship stuck/unstuck in time and space, unhampered by the laws of physics, missing a single deck out of dozens was probably not that surprising a thing.

He was about to ask Spock for clarification, how far away they were, anything to ease his concerns, when he heard somebody calling his name. His, then Spock's, and then McCoy's. “That's Bunker,” the captain said.

“Indeed it is,” Spock said. “Aleshia was correct.”

“He's not far away,” McCoy said.

The words were barely out of his mouth when the din of combat sounded.

•   •   •

Tikolo felt the ship lurch. She braced herself, though she couldn't have said against what. A flash of pink light moved through the small space, like a wave surging toward shore. She watched it coming toward her, shielding her eyes against it with the flat of her hand, finally closing them when it was upon her. It warmed her as it passed, but behind it the air was cooler than before.

Instead of being where she had been—or where, given the flux of her mental state, she
believed
she had been—Tikolo was crouching at the edge of a vast
plain. Two moons hung in the sky, one considerably larger than the other, and with a reddish tint. Its red glow washed the plain, upon which a bloody battle had clearly been fought.

Carnage on a scale greater than she had ever imagined was spread before her. Thousands of skulls had been piled into huge mounds. Corpses had been split open, rib cages jutting free. Carrion birds stood on or next to the carcasses, or flapped their wings for balance while dipping their heads into open cavities. More of them wheeled overhead, living black clouds of them. Fires burned here and there, sending tendrils of smoke into the sky.

She swallowed hard. The stench from the battlefield was overpowering, and her eyes watered at its assault. Was this the ultimate result of war? She had wanted to kill every Romulan she saw; her memory was fragile at the moment, but she knew that much about herself. But would her goal lead to this? Was she viewing an object lesson, or something real?

And if the latter, could she ever get back to where she had been?

Tikolo closed her eyes, trying to shut out the scene in front of her. But the stink wouldn't fade, nor would the screeching cries of all those birds. There was, she realized, something familiar about it. Not familiar in a nostalgic way, but in a terrifying one. It reminded her of something she had seen or experienced, and that had scared her so much she had blocked it from memory.

But here it was, right in front of her.

Eyes shut, she remembered a small door, a hatch, really. It had been just a short distance in front of her. There was somebody on the other side, someone shouting, and if she could just get back there, then this would all be gone and she would be safe.

She had little to lose, she thought. If she stayed at the edge of this battlefield, she would go mad. Maybe she already had. Still in a half-crouch, she moved forward, risking only quick glances through slitted eyes. She knew where she believed the hatch had been, and she pushed toward it, fighting back the almost irresistible urge to retch. She held a phaser in her right fist; with her left hand, she reached out toward where the hatch should be.

It was, she thought, the longest of shots. Tikolo pawed at the air with her left hand, and felt only the heat from the fires, the almost solid thickness of the foul night. This was a mistake, useless, and with her eyes closed, anything could be sneaking up on her. She almost opened them, then chanced another step, two.

Her hand touched something solid, metallic.

She pushed on it, eyes still clamped tight.

The hatch swung open, and she opened her eyes at last, shoving herself through. Not into a wretched field of battle, but instead into the big, mold-encrusted, filthy equipment storeroom of a starship.

“Miranda!” Bunker cried. She turned toward him.
He looked like he had just crawled off the battlefield, with cuts crisscrossing his face, and his red shirt and black pants in shreds.

She remembered him, though not like this, and then she remembered the rest of it. The dimensional fold, the shuttle trip, exploring the
McRaven
and this alien vessel. The Romulans attacking, and herself, deserting her detail. Greene and Ruiz were dead, but there were still Chandler and Vandella to worry about. “Come on, Bunker,” she said. “We've got to get—”

Her sentence was cut off by the flash of a disruptor beam tearing into the wall beside them.

The Romulans were still here, waiting.

She dropped to one knee, to offer a smaller target, and fired.

Spock reached the doorway first, since only he could tell where Aleshia directed them. With the sounds of battle growing ever nearer, the captain and the rest were close behind. Suddenly he made a sharp left turn.

Ahead, the room was crowded.

Big machines lay everywhere, forgotten by time and the neglect of beings who could no longer use them.

Directly ahead were Vandella and Chandler. Beyond them was a large group of Romulans, maybe thirty strong, firing upon someone farther back. Barely shielded by some of the heavy equipment, Tikolo and Bunker were returning their fire. Vandella and Chandler appeared to have just arrived and were taking up firing positions. They would be shooting at the Romulans' backs, which didn't seem sporting except for the certainty that the Romulans would turn at the first hint of an attack from behind. Either way, the Romulans far outnumbered the
Enterprise
forces.