EVEN IN THE ash-dark afternoon, Uhura could tell how badly Chekov's firefight had damaged the inside of Seismic Station Three. From where she squatted outside the access hatch, she could see at least three jagged holes torn into the seismic array by disruptor blasts. One of them had ripped apart the laser sighting device that Mutchler and Sulu had so carefully put together back on the shuttle. The fallen laser itself lay half-buried in ash, a trail of scorched metal leading from it to the satellite uplink module, where it branched into blackened spiderwebs of burnt circuitry.
Uhura forced herself to focus on estimating the extent of damage to the data-link boards and how it could have been repaired if only she had a repair kit. It wasn't a very useful thing to do, but it was easier than trying to watch while Mutchler hauled himself into the station with little spasming grunts of pain, struggling to reach what was left of the data-communications port.
"You should have let me do that." Ash and cinders grated under her palms as Uhura braced herself over the geologist's exposed legs, careful not to touch the splinted one. "I know how to use that kind of transmitter."
"Not the way—I have it wired." Even in the shelter of the ravine, Mutchler's breathless voice was barely audible over the background rumbling from Rakatan Mons. He reached the data-link module at last and tugged out its central transmitting controller, then erupted into cursing.
"What's the matter?"
"The superconducting circuits have all fused back to metal oxide." Mutchler twisted awkwardly in the constricted center aisle of the station to show her the circuit board. Even in the gathering darkness, Uhura could see the telltale rainbow colors prisming beneath the glassy inner surface.
"Oh, no." She grabbed at the sides of the access panel to keep her balance while the ground shook again beneath her. During the last half-hour, while the ash cloud spread like a dark stain across the sky, the volcano had begun to quiver every few minutes with a swarm of small but relentless earthquakes. "Are there any other circuits here we can replace it with?"
"Not a single damned one." The geologist dropped the ruined board, then cursed again when ash spattered him wetly where it fell. "Some lubricant must have leaked in here—oh, God, no. I think it's blood from one of those Elasians—"
Uhura felt him shudder and heard the incipient hysteria in his voice, born of injury, fatigue, and desperation. She leaned down and grabbed at his belt, hauling him out of the station before his useless thrashing did more damage to either him or the equipment.
"It's all right." She caught one flailing hand and held it tight despite its wet stickiness. "It's all right."
Mutchler shook once more, convulsively, then fell still. After a moment, he managed to roll over and look up at her, his eyes more black than gray in the volcanic twilight. "Sorry," he muttered. "It was just—seeing all those dead bodies. And knowing we're going to die too—"
Uhura shook her head with fierce determination. "Don't give up yet. Just because your transmitter doesn't work doesn't mean we're going to die." Footsteps crunched on loose ash and she looked up, recognizing the slightly too-quick step. "Sulu! Did you find any communicators on those dead Elasians?"
"No. Sorry." Three metal wristbands clattered into Uhura's lap, tossed with a little more force than necessary. Sulu's face was shadowed with exhaustion, but his eyes still held the glitter of excess adrenaline. "All they had were short-range Klingon comm bands."
"That low-power rubbish!" Uhura restrained an urge to fling the useless units down into the ravine. "We can't even jury-rig them together to reach the ship."
"But we can use them to talk to each other in case we get separated." Sulu nodded significantly at Mutchler, whose ash-encrusted face looked noticeably pasty even in the growing dark.
"That's true." Uhura's glance traveled from the geologist back to the helmsman as she tried to guess which of them would pass out first. After two kilometers under Mutchler's considerable weight, she had half-expected Sulu to collapse when they arrived at the seismic station. Perhaps, she thought wryly, he couldn't do it until Israi gave him permission.
Sulu saw her assessing glance and smiled. "Don't worry, I'm holding out. The volcano keeps giving me booster shots of adrenaline with all these earthquakes."
"That's just harmonic tremor." Mutchler struggled to sit up, then rested his head on folded arms with a sigh. "It means there's magma moving up into the main chamber."
"And that's supposed to be reassuring?" Uhura traded amused glances with Sulu. Their faint smiles died when Mutchler's answering head-shake turned into a sudden, convulsive shiver.
"Nothing about what this volcano is doing is reassuring."
They sat a moment in silence, listening to the distant growl of the eruption. Then Uhura lifted one of the wristbands to eye level, squinting at it resolutely through the dimness.
"I'd better adjust the frequency on these so no one else can listen in to us." She fished one of her earrings out of her pocket and used the thin edge of its backing clip to lever out the tiny access panel inside the band. "You didn't find any Federation equipment at all, Sulu?"
"No. If there was any here, someone got it before us." Sulu half-turned when Israi came to join him, her hands full of gleaming gunmetal weaponry. "We found three Klingon disruptors, though, two of them still with some charge."
Startled, Uhura opened her mouth to ask the helmsman why he'd entrusted the weapons to Israi, but the slight tic of muscle in one thin cheek warned her not to press the issue. She bent her head and concentrated on retuning the transmission settings inside each of the three comm bands, her hands doing the delicate work with automatic precision while her mind worried over alternate ways to contact the ship.
"If we can't contact the Enterprise from here, we'll just have to walk to the next seismic station," she decided at last, closing up the last wristband. She handed one of the short-range communicators to Sulu and one to Mutchler, keeping the third one for herself. Israi watched in silence but surprised Uhura by making no sound of protest.
Mutchler snorted weakly while he took the comm band. "That's another ten kilometers away. I'll never make it that far." He turned his gaze to catch Sulu's, equally shadowed and equally somber. "Neither will you."
"No, probably not."
"My camp lies just a few kilometers down this dead stream." Israi's intent almond eyes met Uhura's, as if the men's problems didn't really matter to her. The Dohlman hefted one Klingon disruptor, her long fingers closing expertly around its curved stock. Then, abruptly, she held the other out to Uhura. "Here. We will call your ship on our communicator, after we kill all the rest of them."
Uhura didn't hesitate to take the weapon from the young Elasian. She only wished she could get the other one away as easily. "Kill the rest of who, Israi?"
"The Crown Regent's cohort." The Dohlman jerked a disdainful chin back toward the three scattered bodies. "These dead belonged to her. There will be more of them alive below."
"Why do you have to kill them?" Exasperation lent Mutchler the strength to lift his head and scowl at her. "Can't you just gloriously order them to let us into camp?"
Israi traded hostile stares with the geologist. "They will not obey me," she said at last, almost reluctantly.
He snorted again. "I thought you were the Dohlman of Elas."
"I am!" Loose ash kicked out as Israi whirled to her feet, as tireless as if they hadn't been climbing steep volcanic slopes for the past four hours. She strode three impatient paces away, then turned and came back to scowl at Mutchler. "But my aunt wishes to be Dohlman—and as Crown Regent she is my heir. Now do you see why we can't just walk into camp, idiot geologist?"
"Oh." Mutchler dropped his head back onto his arms, his brief spurt of energy obviously fading. "Well, go kill them if you want to. I'll guard the wreckage while you're gone."
"Wreckage!" Uhura shot to her feet. "We haven't checked the wreckage of the flyer for a communicator. If there's one anywhere, it's there."
Sulu glanced at the opposite slope of the ravine, where the smashed flyer still smoldered sullenly. A barely visible heat shimmer trembled over the broken warp core, vanishing against the ash-dark sky above it. "It's not safe, Uhura. There's too much heat coming out of that core, too long after the explosion. You know that means there's subspace leakage."
Uhura tucked her chin into one fisted hand, tapping her thumb against her cheek while she judged safety margins in her head. "Fifteen minutes' exposure to subspace radiation won't kill us."
"And what matter if it did?" A quizzical smile tugged at Israi's lips. Uhura couldn't remember seeing the expression on the Dohlman's face before, but still it looked oddly familiar. After a moment, she recognized it with a start as a replica of her own rueful smile. "If the idiot geologist has the truth in him about this volcano, we will all be dead soon anyway."
Sulu's eyes narrowed, emotions struggling in his face as he stared at her. "So you want me to go look for a communicator?"
"No." Israi lifted her chin, smile fading into more typical Elasian arrogance. "You have served beyond your strength, bondsman, and will be more hindrance now than help. Stay here. I will look for this communicator."
"We'll both look for it." Uhura saw the frustrated way Sulu tried to rise, despite Israi's curt order. "Don't worry, we'll just yank the communicator board as soon as we find it and bring it back to use with the station generator."
Sulu grunted, settling back to the ground under Israi's compelling gaze. "Don't wait to see if it works." His grim voice was aimed at Uhura although his eyes never wavered from his Dohlman. "Just grab it and get out."
"All right." The ground quivered again beneath Uhura's feet as she rose, rippling and twitching like the skin of some huge nervous beast. The motion reminded her of the geologic equipment she still carried and she unstrapped the portable seismic monitor, handing it over to Mutchler. A flicker of scientific interest fought through the weariness in his face as he accepted it. He had the display turned on and was muttering over it even before Uhura and Israi turned away.
"Babbling again," the Dohlman commented, but the scorn in her voice sounded tolerant rather than angry. Becoming mature seemed to have done a lot to improve her personality, Uhura reflected ironically. Or perhaps, like any human adolescent, Israi was molding her behavior on the adults she could observe around her.
They slid down the final slope of the ravine on a steeply piled layer of ash, then began to struggle up the opposite side. The loose volcanic cinders had a nasty habit of holding firm until Uhura put her full weight on them, then cascading out from underfoot. The low-oxygen air of Rakatan tore at her lungs. "When we get to the flyer, I'll look for the communicator," she told Israi, between gasps. "You check the bodies for equipment and—and identity."
Israi gave her a sidelong glance. "You fear your kessh is there."
"Yes." Uhura swallowed ash, bitter and choking in her throat. A memory of dust rising over a fallen body filled her mind, fresh knowledge painting steel blue armor on the dark forms converging there. "Your aunt the Crown Regent held the camp when we escaped, didn't she?"
"Yes." Israi broke stride, blinking at the sizzling heat that met them several strides away from the Elasian flyer. Uhura pushed into the shimmering core emission without hesitating, her mind starting the fifteen-minute clock that would get them out before they absorbed too much subspace radiation. She scanned the twisted wreckage quickly, seeing with relief that the front end, where the communicator would be, had survived battered but intact.
"In here." Uhura dropped to her knees to slide through the wrenched-off end of the flyer cabin and heard Israi scramble in behind her. A faint thrumming shivered in the tips of her fingers, telling her how much subspace radiation still laced the flyer's interior. Uhura revised her estimate of their safety margin down to ten minutes.
A faint glimmer of emergency lights illuminated what was left of the murky, ozone-tainted cabin. Uhura scanned the main cabin first, seeing only three Elasian-sized shadows strewn across the floor. Heaving a thin sigh of relief, she turned toward the cockpit, searching for a communicator panel. She found it more by luck than knowledge, catching at the nearest panel to steady herself as she lurched over the last row of seats and only then seeing the unlit frequency display in the dark.
"None of those I searched had communicators," Israi's voice said from the dark just behind Uhura. "Have you found—" The Dohlman's voice broke off as something stirred in the wreckage of the cockpit. Busy tracing power cables to their unfamiliar sources, Uhura didn't pay much attention, not even when the Dohlman choked in what sounded like wordless horror. There was no ignoring the words that tumbled out of her afterward, though. "Kessh! You're still alive!"
Uhura cursed and snapped the communicator cables free with more force than she'd intended. One whipped back to lash across her face while a second tangled itself around a panel support strut. She yanked it free with merciless haste, then turned to where Israi knelt. Only the top of her black head was visible above the twisted pilot's seat, and Uhura couldn't see the man she spoke to.
"Your Glory." The hoarse tenor voice stilled the frantic pounding of Uhura's heart even before she got close enough to see Takcas in the darkness. Only the gold Elasian eyes and red hair allowed her to recognize him. His face was already swollen and glazed hard with subspace damage, blood blisters spattered like rusty brown stains beneath the peeling skin. "I do not deserve the honor of seeing you yet alive."
"Yes, you do, my kessh." Israi bent over him, her eyes fiercely intent on his. Uhura paused at a discreet distance, compassion welling inside her. She should have known that only someone with an Elasian's strength and endurance could have survived in the flyer this long. The subspace radiation would have killed a human many times over.
"But I should have known—" Takcas's throat closed on a strangled cough, then cleared again. "—that legless lizard, Oben, was a traitor. Should have known he was already the Crown Regent's bondsman, before ever he swore his oath to you." Hi gaze slid to Uhura and then back again, bleakly resigned. "The Starfleet Dohlman has the better kessh, Your Glory. He fooled Oben into unleashing him. Now he goes to die like a man against your aunt's cohort while I lie rotting like a gutted fish."
"He is not the better kessh!" Israi protested hotly. "It was not he who hid me on the Starfleet shuttle, it was not he who saved me from my aunt's bondsmen."
"When it was too late to fight them." The hand the kessh lifted to his Dohlman was bloated to a misshapen, fingerless lump, but Israi took it anyway. "I would have known about Oben in time, if you had cried the tears, Your Glory. I would have known and I would not have betrayed you—"
"You have never betrayed me, Takcas. I say it, who now have the tears of a Dohlman." Her face was wet with them, reflecting back the emergency lights in thin, flickering stripes as she bent to him. Takcas sucked in an astoundingly deep breath as the moisture touched his swollen fingers, then let it out again in a long, almost singing sigh.
"My life in your hands, Dohlman Israi," he whispered, ritually slow and deep. A brown tarnish of blood was beginning to dull the fierce gold shine of his eyes as tiny blood vessels ruptured and leaked.
Israi's voice shook, then steadied again. "My honor in your hands, Kessh Takcas. Be my bondsman."
"I am—" He coughed again, more rackingly, then groped blindly up at her. "Your Glory—you have your knife?"
"Yes."
Takcas's rigid face still managed a faint smile. "Then it is a good day to die."
"It is a good day to die," Israi agreed.
The steadiness of her voice left Uhura utterly unprepared for the swift flash of metal in the darkness, the downward plunge and the wet impact of metal on flesh. Blood bubbled around the quivering knife, embedded deep in the swollen throat with Israi's hand still clenched upon the ruby hilt.
Rakatan Mons jumped, bouncing rocks across its broken surface, and snarled a long, heart-stopping peal of thunder. Chekov jerked upright from where he'd been resting against a tall rock outcrop with his head pillowed on his arms. Pain, dulled to nearly nothing beneath the roar of the awakening volcano, kicked him in the side as protest to the sudden movement.
He turned clumsily to put his back to the rocks, then pressed one hand hard to his side to try and keep the pain at bay while he squinted up the slope toward the distant peak of the volcano. Billows of crawling black poured over the clouds already gathered halfway up Rakatan Mons's flanks. Roiling darkness swallowed every shred of white that tried to flee ahead of its burning breath, chewing up the cumulus vapor until not even a glimpse of the sky beyond remained. Below it, Chekov took a shuddering breath as he watched the monster's shapeless shadow flow across the ground around him until it finally ate every feature and detail of the land, as well. Then the volcano rumbled again in satisfaction, and unleashed a single, brutal crack that nearly broke the clouded sky.
How close did this mean they were to the end? Chekov wondered. The mountain had bucked and grumbled almost continuously since he'd left the seismic station—what felt like hours ago now, but he really couldn't be sure—yet this was the first belch of ash that hadn't simply swept across the mountainside like a quickly passing storm. Hanging high above the ground like a filthy slick on top of deep water, this black cloud seemed to grow and darken with every trembling rumble. Chekov looked down the length of ravine still standing between him and the Elasian mining camp, and his heart throbbed painfully with regret.
He couldn't walk in this. It was darker than the night they'd tried escape from the mining camp. The weak air and shifting earth made it hard to stay standing where he was, much less hike another uncounted number of meters. Feathers of what looked like dirty snow floated lazily through the air to pepper the ground all around him. He held out a bloody hand to catch an errant flake, and it stung like fire where it set down on his palm. Hot ash, he realized dismally as he jerked his hand back and scrubbed it against the leg of his trousers. So I either bleed to death or burn to death. He wasn't fond of either option.
When he first interrupted his hike to rest here, he promised himself he wouldn't stop for long. Walking at all had become a painful matter of stubbornly moving because he refused to fall, of concentrating on breathing deeply enough in the poor atmosphere, of ignoring the heavy limp that had gradually crept into his step over the course of the last long hours. He'd told himself that he could catch his breath while standing up, because he knew if he sat down the chances were good he wouldn't get up again. Waving flecks of burning ash away from his face and hair, he admitted now that he wasn't going onward either.
Only a few limping steps farther down the ravine, some sort of fracture in the rock had dropped a clutter of stones away from the rock face, leaving behind a long indentation that might have been scooped out by some giant's arm. Chekov didn't even have to duck to step under the overhang, but easing himself to the ground against the back wall proved harder than he'd expected. He sat down more heavily than he meant to, and cried out sharply at the pain. It felt good to be sitting, though, to give in to his shivering muscles and lean his head back against the rock with a weary sigh. A whole other man's length beyond his feet, black and scarlet ash drifted randomly in the burning breeze, building little glowing cairns. If the sky cleared and the ash moved on, he could try to stumble farther downslope ahead of the next explosion of darkness. If they didn't …
Tucking his elbow tight against his aching side, Chekov watched the rain of luminous ash and waited for the world to end.