Chapter Fifteen

HUNKERED DOWN in her closet on a pile of dirty clothes, Myra fought the temptation to drift off to sleep. She knew somebody would be arriving in the tiny apartment eventually, but she didn’t know whether it would be her father, Ensign Ro, or people sent by President Oscaras to fetch her. Whoever they were, if she fell asleep, they would see the message on the computer and go to Katie’s house without her even knowing they were there. So she had to stay awake.

Just as she was actually prying her eyes open with her fingers she heard the latch turning. Then the door banged open in a clumsy way that didn’t sound like her father’s. She held her breath, awaiting his loving call, but it never came.

Instead she could barely make out the muffled voices of at least two men: “Is she here?”

“Look at the screen.”

Myra’s heart counted off the milliseconds.

“Damn!” muttered one of them. “Oscaras didn’t want to alert anyone. He wanted to keep it quiet.”

“Well, what harm can a little girl cause? In a few hours it’ll all be over.”

“I hope so.”

“Let’s report back.”

She heard the men tromp out and the door slam shut behind them. Myra had inhaled several times, but her chest was too constricted with fear to exhale fully. When she finally let out a long sigh it brought no relief. The girl crawled out of the closet and stood stiffly, feeling as though she had been kicked in the stomach by a steel-toed boot.

Her dad and Ro were not coming back tonight. They were in real trouble, and there was no one she could turn to for help. The feeling of betrayal by her friends and neighbors was almost worse than the fear for her father. She didn’t feel she had broken with President Oscaras; she felt he had broken with her and let her down.

Where could she go? Sooner or later they would actually check her friends’ homes and maybe search this one. She couldn’t run off into the woods with the Klingons out there, even if she knew a way to get past the guards and the wall. That would be suicide. Myra knew the village as well as anyone, and she could envision several possible hiding places; but how could she get there without being seen? There might be a guard posted right out front, for all she knew, and ten o’clock was too late at night for a twelve-year-old to be walking around the compound by herself.

She sank onto her bed, exhausted by worry, indecision, and lack of sleep. What would her dad do in this situation? Answering that question wasn’t much help —he’d walk up to President Oscaras and punch him in the nose, which was probably what he had done to get himself into so much trouble.

From what she could tell, Ro had a similar temperament. Great. That left her as the only sensible one. But the two of them were preferable to most of the adults in the village, who just kept quiet, kept going along, even though they knew it was wrong for Oscaras to make himself a dictator. Ever since the attacks by the Klingons had begun the community had turned more inward, more fearful, replacing idealism with security.

The night remained eerily silent for all that had to be taking place, thought Myra, and even the drums sounded different. She had stretched out on her bed for a temporary respite, but the comfortable old mattress claimed the girl and stole her away from the fear and chaos into the peaceful realm of sleep.

Squatting upon the floor, with their backs against the wall for maximum leverage, Ensign Ro and Gregg Calvert gripped the bottom of the beige sheet metal. Their hands were wrapped in rags, but the sharp edge of the wall still cut painfully into their flesh. Gregg had pried it up enough to make this hand-hold, and now it was a matter of brute strength. They would pull it inward, ripping up the sloppy welding as they went.

Gregg breathed hard, and sweat was already dribbling off his ruddy face.

“Ready?” he grunted. “One, two, three—go!”

Groaning and grimacing with the effort, Ro and Calvert pulled with all their might, trying to use their legs for as much lifting power as they could get. The metal groaned in harmony with them and lifted off the floor a few centimeters.

“Stop,” panted Gregg. “I want to see what we’re breaking into.”

Ro hardly complained about the rest, and she could feel the muscles in her shoulders and thighs screaming from the effort. She was dismayed when she saw how little they had lifted the sheet-metal wall, but it was enough for Gregg to get down on his stomach and peer into the darkness beyond.

“Good,” he breathed. “Another storeroom, filled with stuff but no people.”

They had chosen the wall opposite the door of their cell, figuring that the room beyond would have a door that opened into another corridor, giving them a better chance to escape undetected. Gregg stood and tightened the rags around his hands.

“Are you all right?” he asked Ro. “How’s your ankle?”

“Great,” she gulped. “Now the pain in my back and my hands is making me forget all about it.”

Gregg nodded sympathetically. “We shouldn’t have to pull it up much more to get you out.”

“No, you’re coming with me,” Ro insisted. “You know your way around here, and I don’t.”

“Then let’s put our backs into it,” muttered Gregg.

They resumed their positions, which was an easier matter with the wall having been raised a few centimeters. They grunted, grimaced, and sweated their way through five more tugging contests against the welded metal. Finally the gap was big enough for Ro to fit her head and half her torso inside the adjoining storeroom. With her long reach she grabbed a metal broom, which they used as a lever to pry the metal up enough to let Gregg pass under. Scraping along on their bellies, they crawled out.

More accurately, they crawled into another storeroom, which contained cleaning supplies and linen and smelled strongly of various disinfectants. In the darkness they stumbled to the doorway, and Gregg tried the latch. It wasn’t locked and opened easily, but he kept the door closed for the moment.

“Grab some sheets, buckets, or mops,” he said, pointing to the stuff that surrounded them, “so we look like we came in here to get supplies. If we see anyone out there, just turn and walk in the opposite direction.”

“Okay,” nodded Ro, glad she was still wearing the plain clothing of the colonists. She grabbed a bucket and a mop and tried to find something that might actually make a useful weapon. Her hand landed upon a spray bottle filled with what smelled like ammonia. She grabbed it

Gregg took a stack of towels and a bucket. He carefully opened the door and stepped out. The immediate area was deserted, but to their right figures rushed past in a corridor that intersected theirs. Ro and Gregg immediately turned to the left and walked briskly until they found a door that led to the outside.

The cool night air was like a welcome splash of water after rolling in the dirt, but there was no time to dally. Gregg motioned with his head toward a side street, and Ro quickly followed. They left their towels and cleaning materials in a dark corner, although Ro held on to her spray bottle of ammonia. They moved between rows of nondescript one-story buildings until they reached an intersection with a brightly lit street beyond. Gregg motioned Ro to stay in the shadows while he edged around the corner into the light. A second or two later he had seen all he needed to see, and he ducked back into the alley and flattened himself against the wall.

“No way to get to the radio,” he whispered. “The building must be surrounded by a dozen armed men. I don’t know what’s going on, but it looks like the whole place is getting ready for a war.”

“Then,” said Ro, “we should try to find the rest of the away team.”

“In the forest?” asked Gregg in shock.

“That’s where they are,” said Ro. “They’re probably safer than we are right now.”

The former security chief couldn’t argue with that. “Can we stop to get Myra?”

he asked.

Ro couldn’t argue with that, so they scurried off into the darkness. Thanks to Gregg’s extensive knowledge of the compound, they were able to maneuver in the shadows and stay out of sight of the bands of colonists that rushed importantly from one place to another.

Gregg Calvert fought the pangs of being left out of whatever big thing was happening, because it was evident that a volunteer force of the most able men and women was being assembled. He could only imagine it had something to do with the Klingons. He shook off the feeling of having wasted a year’s worth of sweat and blood and tried to concentrate on his own survival, and that of his beloved daughter.

Ensign Ro could take care of herself, he figured, and he glanced admiringly at the lithe woman creeping along beside him. He could tell from her agonized gait that her ankle must be bothering her, but she had said nothing more about it.

She was a fighter, as evidenced by the spray bottle she gripped like a phaser pistol. He wouldn’t want to cross her. In fact, Ro was exactly the kind of no-nonsense, straightforward role model he wanted for his daughter. A woman like

He brushed aside thoughts of his dead wife, because they were far more painful than thoughts of President Oscaras’s treachery. Besides, if Janna hadn’t plowed into that asteroid, he wouldn’t be in this rotten predicament.

They were nearing his street, and Gregg reached out to keep Ensign Ro from stepping into the light. For a moment her body crushed back against his, and he held her longer than he needed to. She looked up at him with dark eyes that seemed to say: This isn’t the time or place, but if we’re smart and resourceful, maybe there will be another time and place.

He let her go and whispered, “The door to our apartment is about twenty meters away. Give me about thirty seconds, and if you don’t hear anything that sounds like trouble, come after me.”

Ro smiled fondly. “I may come after you anyway.”

Gregg straightened his broad shoulders and strode into the street as if there wasn’t a thing wrong in the world. It was fortunate he was armed with his cocky attitude, because there was a guard with a phaser rifle lurking in the shadows of his front door. It was too late to turn back, so he strode up to the man, smiling.

“Hi, Bill,” he said cheerfully.

“Gregg!” said the man, blinking with surprise, “I thought you—”

“Oscaras let me go.” Gregg shrugged. “We need every person we’ve got for what’s coming up.”

“No kidding,” sighed Bill, obviously relieved that Gregg Calvert was back in the fold. “Your daughter’s not home—I was supposed to wait for her.”

“Well, she’s not going to be coming home this time of night,” Gregg replied, suppressing the seething anger inside of him. “I’m going to try to get a couple hours of sleep, and I suggest you do the same.”

“Okay,” said Bill, uncertain whether to accept this good fortune and return to his bed or to obey his orders to the letter.

“I’ll see you later,” concluded Gregg, opening the door to his home and stepping inside.

“Yeah, see ya,” said the man. He looked at his watch and the night sky and figured yes, maybe there was time for a couple hours of sleep.

Ro heard the man’s footsteps coming closer, and she pressed against the wall as he ambled past. When the man was out of sight she straightened her shoulders as Gregg had done and strolled into the street. Luckily, it was empty, and she saw Gregg motioning to her from a nearby doorway. She rushed inside as quickly as her swollen ankle would let her, and Gregg shut the door behind her.

“Bastards!” he seethed. “They’re not only after me, they’re after Myra. I’ll strangle Oscaras by his fat red neck!”

“Daddy,” said a small voice. They turned to see Myra in the doorway, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Honey!” said Gregg, beaming. He swept the girl up in his muscular arms. She wrapped her scrawny arms around his neck, and they hugged each other as if to make sure that they would never be separated again.

“They came to get me,” she said breathlessly, “but I hid and left a phony message. Daddy, what happened to your head? What’s going on?”

“I can’t explain now, sweetheart,” answered Gregg. “We can’t stay here any longer.”

“We’ve got to get out of the compound,” Ro reminded him, “and find the away team.”

“Right,” sighed the blond man. “There’s only one person who knows how to get out of the compound, past the guards and the wall.”

“Who?” asked Myra.

“Whoever our spy is.”

“Do you know who it is?” asked Ro.

Gregg nodded. “I have a hunch. Even if I’m wrong, it’ll be a good hiding place, because it’s the last place they would look for us. And it’s close by.”

He reached into a drawer and pulled out a key chain. “Master keys,” he said with a smile. “One of the advantages of being the ex-security chief. Come on.”

Once again they tried to look as natural as possible as they stepped into the eerie salmon-colored lights of the compound. People were running to and fro, and three more people in a hurry didn’t raise much suspicion. They walked briskly down an adjoining street and followed Gregg as he dashed toward a doorway that was bathed in shadows. He tried the door, found it locked, and fumbled with his key chain for the magic key. As he did, Ro read the nameplate on the door.

Doctor Louise Drayton, the sign said.

Gregg cursed under his breath as he fumbled with the keys, but he finally got the door open, and they slipped inside. As Gregg had suspected, Louise Drayton was not at home. Too busy playing the new security chief, thought Ro.

Gregg brushed his hand over a panel on the wall and turned on a few lights, then rushed to the only window in the small cubicle and closed the curtains tight. At once, he began moving the bed, couch, and other furniture, searching for something on the floor.

“How do you know Drayton is the spy?” asked Ro. The nasty entomologist would certainly be her first choice, but she had seen no evidence.

“I had my first suspicions when we were aboard your ship,” answered Gregg. “When we questioned that Klingon who saved our lives on the beach he said something about Balak. I asked who Balak was, and Drayton immediately answered that he was their leader. How did she know that?”

Myra suggested, “Maybe the boy said that when he was our captive.”

Gregg shook head. “I was present every time we questioned him, and he never told us anything that useful. My suspicions were confirmed when Drayton turned on us outside the radio room and ordered that Ro’s communicator be confiscated.” He sank down to his knees and ran his hands over the floor. “Now where is that damn thing? It’s gotta be here.”

“What are you looking for?” asked Myra.

The only other room in the tiny studio apartment was the bathroom, and Gregg Calvert jumped to his feet and ducked into it. Myra and Ro ran to the doorway and peered curiously over his broad shoulders. The bathroom had an ugly brown carpet on the floor that wasn’t fastened down, because Gregg grabbed a corner and easily peeled it off. Under the carpet, resting on the cement floor, was a metal plate about a meter square.

“Bingo!” exclaimed Gregg Calvert. He grabbed the chunk of sheet metal and threw it off. There was a gaping black hole underneath.

“Wow!” gasped Myra. “A tunnel!”

“Yeah,” said Gregg, “I couldn’t figure out any other way she could get past the guards and the wall.” He got down on his hands and knees and peered into the narrow abyss. “There’s a ladder,” he said, “and what looks like a lantern and some other stuff at the bottom.”

“How did she dig it?” asked Myra.

Ro answered, “It wouldn’t be much problem with a phaser. She could carve it out in a couple of nights if she knew what she was doing.”

“She knows what she’s doing all right,” muttered Gregg. “She’s destroying New Reykjavik by pitting the Klingons and the colonists against each other. But why?

Ro frowned. “So the Federation and the Klingons will both clear put and leave Selva to the Romulans.”

They stood in silence for a few seconds, mulling over the ramifications of their discovery. They were so silent they could hear the latch turning on the outside door. Ro motioned them back into the bathroom, and they stepped gingerly around the exposed hole. They barely got the bathroom door shut before the small dark woman entered her quarters.

“What’s this?” Louise Drayton muttered to herself. “What happened to my furniture?”

Ro decided not to let her make any more discoveries. She stepped boldly out of the bathroom, one hand behind her back.

“Hi!” said the Bajoran cheerfully.

Drayton gasped with surprise, then a smile crept across her ageless face.

Ageless, thought Ro, thanks to a substantial amount of plastic surgery that had turned her from a Romulan into a human.

“Aren’t you the cheeky one,” said Drayton with a begrudging admiration.

“Where’s the real Louise Drayton?” asked Ensign Ro. “Is her body buried on some far-off planet?”

The scientist smiled. “I think I’ll go tell President Oscaras you’re here.”

“Please do,” replied Ro. “I’ve got something to show him in the bathroom.”

That wiped the smile off the woman’s face. She started to reach into her jacket pocket, but Ro was prepared. She whipped the spray bottle from behind her back and shot a burning stream of ammonia into the spy’s face.

“Aaagh!” shrieked Drayton, staggering backward, ripping at her eyes. Despite her bad ankle, Ro charged across the room and smashed her fist into Drayton’s face, sending the woman sprawling to the floor. Ro quickly grabbed the phaser from the woman’s jacket pocket and leveled it at her. Her hand hurt from the blow she had delivered, but she felt awfully good otherwise.

“Where’s my comm badge?” Ro demanded.

“I don’t have it,” Drayton muttered. “Oscaras has it.” She started to get up on one elbow.

“Don’t move,” cautioned Ro. “I haven’t checked this phaser, but knowing you, it’s probably set to kill.” She checked it and saw that it was, in fact, set to kill. She changed the setting to heavy stun.

Gregg and Myra stepped out of the bathroom, and Gregg’s balled fists made it obvious that he wouldn’t mind punching the doctor, too. “What’s going on out there?” he demanded.

Drayton blinked. “You don’t know?”

“They haven’t exactly kept us informed,” said Gregg. “What’s going on?”

The doctor leapt to her feet and made a dash for the door, but Gregg stretched out a long leg and tripped her. That gave Ro time to paralyze her with a blue phaser beam. Louise Drayton lay crumpled on the floor.

Ro slumped into Drayton’s couch and muttered, “She’ll be out at least an hour.”

Gregg shrugged. “I doubt she would’ve told us anything, anyway.” He pointed to the bathroom. “There’s our way out of here. Do you still want to take it?”

“We have to,” said the ensign. “When she doesn’t return they’ll come looking for her. And sometime they’ll figure out we escaped, if they haven’t already. But let’s take her with us.”

Gregg Calvert was the first to lower himself into the tunnel, and he made a couple of interesting discoveries. “This halogen lantern will be useful,” he said. “And here’s the costume she used to seduce the Klingons. There’s also some kind of whip.”

“Let me see the whip,” said Ro. Gregg handed it up, and the Bajoran admired the peculiar device. “This is no ordinary whip. I’m not sure how it works, but we need every weapon we can find.” She curled it up and stuck it into her belt, not far from Drayton’s phaser. “Are you ready for me to send down the doctor?”

“Sure,” answered Gregg, turning on the lantern and filling the hole with an eerie green-tinged light.

Ro smiled at Myra. “Come on, you can help me.”

Fortunately, the diminutive doctor didn’t weigh very much, even as a limp body, and Ro and Myra were able to carry her to the hole and lower her into Gregg’s sturdy arms. He bad to duck to enter the tunnel with her, but he and the doctor were soon out of sight.

He returned a moment later and called up, “Let’s go! You first, Myra. Ro, will you turn off the lights and see if you can cover the hole?”

“Right,” she answered. The ensign quickly shoved the furniture back into some semblance of order, locked the door, and turned off the lights. She lowered herself into the tunnel, feeling for the ladder with her feet. There was no way she could pull both the metal plate and the carpet over her head, so she opted to cover the hole with only the carpet. If somebody walked in to use the bathroom, they would get a rude surprise, but that couldn’t be helped.

Once she had pulled the carpet over the hole and climbed down the rest of the way she felt like a mole in its burrow, despite the green light that emanated from the lantern only a few meters away. She could see Gregg and Myra silhouetted in its strange glow, plus the limp body of Doctor Drayton in Gregg’s arms.

The tunnel had not been dug but rather vaporized with a phaser, leaving smooth walls that would have been the envy of ancient tunnel diggers. Nevertheless, a few roots and furry lichens poked their way through the soil, and the smell of damp earth was overpowering. Drayton had made the tunnel for herself, and Ro had to duck to keep from touching the wet things growing over her head.

Gregg spoke in the darkness. “Myra, can you pick up the lantern and lead the way?”

“Sure, Dad!” said the girl excitedly. “Gee, this is cool!”

Cool it was, literally, and Ro shivered as they walked along. The light bobbed ahead of her in Myra’s hands, but Gregg’s hulking body cut off most of it. He warned them to keep their voices down, because they would be passing under the wall soon, and he had no idea how close the tunnel passed to a guard tower. Ro thought it was doubtful anybody could hear them down here. Her main concern was that Selva would pick this moment to have a major earthquake, and they’d be buried alive. She tried to tell herself that the earthquake faults were a thousand kilometers away and posed no danger, except for the resultant tidal waves, but the dank earth all around whispered to her of an early grave.

She walked bent over in the darkness for what seemed like a dozen kilometers but was probably less than one. No question about it, thought Ro, Louise Drayton—or whoever she was—had had guts to come down into the blackness and carve out this tunnel, even if she had a phaser to do the hard work. It was also quite an assignment for one woman to rid an entire planet of a Federation colony, but Louise Drayton had nearly succeeded. In fact, she might yet. The primitive planet would be a perfect place for a hidden Romulan base, especially after a Federation colony had failed there. Its location would allow them to monitor both Federation and Klingon space.

Finally Myra stopped and pointed the beam upward. “There’s a ladder here,” she called. “It goes straight up.”

“Let me go first,” said Ro, shouldering her way past the Calverts.

Maybe she was just eager to get out of that pit, but Ro climbed the ladder as quickly as she could and pushed back a flap covered with leaves that hid the opening. Without much regard to what she would find she poked her head out.

She found only darkness and rows of black tree trunks reaching upward to black boughs, where not the slightest speck of light penetrated. The forest reminded her uncomfortably of the tunnel she had just come from. They might as well have been a million kilometers away from New Reykjavik, because there was absolutely no sign of it.

“It’s okay,” she called down to Myra and Gregg, hoping that was really true.

They were no longer in the realm of frightened and deceitful colonists but in the realm of murderous Klingons raised in the wilderness. She shivered at the cold and climbed out of the hole.

She helped Myra up first, then the two of them reached down and pulled the unconscious form of Doctor Drayton to the surface. Gregg Calvert climbed out, looking more frightened than either of the two females. He flinched at a rustling sound overhead, even though it was obviously just some nocturnal animal on the prowl. He turned off the halogen lantern.

“Well,” said Gregg, “any idea how to find your friends?”

“No,” answered Ro glumly. Wandering around in the unfamiliar woods at nights would be the height of lunacy.

Once again, there was nothing to do but wait.