PLAYING ON A PRAYER


The isolated biosign some storys beneath his own had moved from its original location and even as Trip watched was stuttering forward, albeit with a hesitance he would expect only from Hoshi. Some jarring, intangible notion had convinced him that the blood trail was Reed's, and that Hoshi was the source of the readings he picked up. That the mysterious circumstances surrounding Lieutenant Reed these last few days had either altered his physical properties so much that they no longer registered as human, or that those circumstances had gotten him killed.

Kidnapped, Trip amended, fiercely. Gotten him kidnapped. If he was in such high demand among unknown impostors these days, and if the nanobots were of any great value, then there was every reason to believe he may have been spirited away by transporter. That what Malcolm carried would be too valuable to lose by harming the organic host in which they nested. No, that blip he watched with such headaching intensity must be Hoshi. This understandable lack of activity proved it, in some small way; Malcolm, behind that often graceful wall of professional fervor, was a man of action—restless, impatient, and somewhat rash in his decisions. He moved like a man raised in heavy gravity and transplanted to theirs, barely leaving a footprint behind him—something Trip had been, in truth, a little envious of at times. Hoshi was a more cautious creature, capable of feisty show when her situation was cushioned by a degree of safety—or when threatened. Trip recalled fondly the time she had worked round the clock to release them from a sentient, all-assimilating creature in their cargo bay, as if her own life, and not theirs, had been in jeopardy. She responded far more fiercely to threats against her friends than to herself. If that wasn't Hoshi down there, then Trip was the white rabbit.

He had tested his communicator at intervals and turned up nothing but silence, every time speaking to a deaf ear or an unowned communicator that would provide no answer. The corridors did not even echo with the ring of his footsteps.

This communications silence and the comforting activity of that single biosign answered the question Trip had been aching to ask himself, but had not; he had even shied away from it, not liking the vagueness it conjured. Did he return to the ship for help, knowing all was not well, or did he locate that blip that may or may not be Hoshi Sato, and hope not to flounder himself? Was one worth the risk of a second, himself, and if he failed to bring help, then a third, Malcolm?

It was the oldest criticism any Vulcan had ever made of humans, a criticism since echoed by races newer to them but every bit as skeptical. His kind placed the importance of the individual every bit as high as that of the majority, and the greater good was not always the ultimate goal.

Trip replaced his communicator with a snap that sealed his decision as if locking it behind a closed door; he had only to recall Hoshi's fiercely quashed nerves on that first of many away missions, so many months ago, to know which way his path lie.

Trip set his shoulders, and descended into the deep.

-------------------------------

The Grand Old Duke of York . . .

She halted, waiting for the return of an echo she knew would not come.

He had ten thousand men . . .

Hoshi straightened herself resolutely, and smoothed the rumpled creases from her uniform with coaxing palms. To an observer, her fastidiousness and the set of her shoulders would give an impression of professionalism and control—had her wavering, small voice and her stuttering grip on the precious flashlight not betrayed her.

No echoes stirred.

He marched them up to the top of the hill . . . and he marched them down again.

She was beginning to falter in finding new nursery rhymes to repeat. Hoshi had recited every piece in her eclectic repertoire, from I'm a Little Teapot' to this, The Grand Old Duke of York', oddly another English rhyme. She supposed the time she had spent in Reed's company of late had impressed all things British indelibly on her mind.

The flashlight was her one blessing in this unpleasant twist in their mission. She had come along so he wouldn't be alone, but here they were, separated, and wherever he was, he most likely wandered alone, too. She had worried that her good fortune in finding the flashlight was his bad, but her memory of the previous night in sickbay brightened her concern—he had been able to see in the dark. And wherever he was . . . wherever the impostors controlling this hologram had swept him away to . . . may not even be dark as her surroundings were.

She hoped it was not.

Almost as Hoshi stepped through the gaping doorway ahead, it liquefied and fused together like party streamers in a breeze, into a solid wall at her back, sealing her from making any retreat. Trembling badly now, Hoshi tried to forget that image and swept her flashlight around the dark space she had entered. It was a small, featureless room, smaller than the first, and it, like the first, boasted a single, yawning exit.

And when they were up they were up, and when they were down they were down, she murmured, and ran her fingers over the solid square shape of the communicator in her pocket. Useless underground, and so far from Enterprise, useless when Reed no longer had his; but if they came after her, any of them, this may be her one lifeline.

And when they were only halfway up, they were neither up nor down, she stammered, as she went through.

The doorway morphed closed behind her.

-------------------------------

He waited for the echo to bounce its way back to him, reflected wall-to-wall like light from facing mirrors; but his wait was a long one, and the dull shudder he received was little reward for his trouble. Trip cautiously ventured his head and shoulders through the open maw ahead of him, through shredded metal edges like twin rows of teeth, and peered first up and then down into the turbolift shaft's utter darkness, feeling conspicuously like a lion tamer in a circus placing his head in the cat's mouth. His flashlight barely penetrated so much as a few meters in either direction. He had thrown his voice down hard as a curveball, hoping to gauge this shaft's depth by the answering reverberations from the bottom, but his half-hearted shout had been spiraling downwards a long time before he heard a returning whisper, too far away for the exact distance to be of any real concern.

There was no light whatsoever in the gallingly odorless air of the lift shaft. Trip muttered to himself, tucked his flashlight between his teeth, and let his fingers skip along the surface of the sheer inner wall, methodically tracing for any signs of a maintenance ladder. He was under no strict obligation to descend this shaft, his mission had not been to get himself killed; but if he turned back now, he knew he would have difficulty in sleeping at night. He hunted for the ladder which logic—an expression he cordially despised and despaired of using—dictated must be here, within reach of the forced doors. He was half in a frenzy for playing penny hero and half slowed by a gradual onset of reluctancy; he almost hoped he didn't find it, or found it too damaged to use. Any opportunity to excuse himself the climb into a decaying institute somehow left in ruin in the space of two days would be welcomed, but he was not willing, not under any circumstances, to excuse himself. No matter how or why this place was abandoned, he wouldn't run scared. Yet.

Abruptly his fingers stumbled onto the first rung; they brushed against protruding metal, unafflicted by the decay he witnessed elsewhere in this institute. He curled his fingers around the bar and found a good grip before trusting it with a little of his weight, tugging until the veins stood out on his arm and his knuckles paled; then he tested a little more, and a little more, finally all. Reaching blindly down, he caught the rung below in his other hand and kicked out for the lower ones with his toe caps. They struck metal, chiming an alarming echo down the length of the shaft, and finally were set firmly on the maintenance ladder.

If the lift car either suspended above or shattered below him began to move suddenly, then he was toast. They—whoever the they' who owned the institute but were not the Vulcan scientists were—would be peeling bits of engineer off the ceiling or floor for the best part of a month. And the prospect of sudden lift activity did not leave him much room for confidence. He didn't know what struck him as being so wrong with this institute, besides that it had changed so much in so short a time . . . but he didn't like it.

Trip began to climb downwards, feeling in the dark for one rung after the next. His racing breath murmured around him like old church bells slowly ringing into silence.

What if the lift was above him, and suddenly shot down? He'd be flatter than three-day-old lemonade before he even knew what had happened. He'd had no means of checking the lift car's whereabouts prior to his climb. Perhaps it lurked in the net of shadows above, hanging precariously by one damaged cable, in runners slippery with grease; above and unstable, waiting to plummet to its final resting place some stories below. Taking him with it.

Trip climbed steadily, ears tuned for any shimmer of sound in this deep shaft. A sudden breeze whistled past his shoulder. He halted between rungs, listening. He was rewarded with the faintest, slowest grind, a straining sound . . .

The roof above him was creaking ominously. Trip hastened on, hearing the noise deepen and slowly echo back—the voice of the clock against which he raced.

Ah, c'mon, you gotta be kiddin' me, he groaned. He was answered with only further grinding sounds, metal gauging furrows in metal, the whistle of the air current as something heavy sped down the shaft only centimeters away. He felt the breeze on him again as it passed.

Breathing hard, Trip took his flashlight from his mouth, and shone it above him and below, straining his eyes against the black swallowing the beam. Below, a strong gush of air spewed from the side of the shaft, from another opening. Maybe ten meters away.

Something blunt and heavy slammed into the wall beside him.

The lift car was coming down. In pieces.

Where's a transporter when you need one, huh, tell me that? he growled, and hastened on, two rungs at a time, three, making leaps of faith from one to the next that, in the dark, he would never normally dream of making. The ceiling continued to thunder. Risking everything in one gargantuan token, understanding that to climb in regular patterns the five meters or so left to him would never get him to that breath of air in time, Trip decided to play on a prayer. An old expression of his grandmother's, perhaps never founded on any real convictions but nevertheless handed down through generations of Tuckers to describe that single leap of faith—that ultimate gamble that would win or lose all.

Trip closed his eyes, clawed in a pitifully shaky breath that filled his lungs with old, dusty air . . .

. . . and let go.

-------------------------------

Hoshi submitted to the maze that led her and herded her through an underground network, windowless, airless, and lightless, deep into the heart of an institute that did not exist. The thought burrowed into her efforts to keep it away, swimming against the tide; if she was underground, in a building holographic and therefore changeable in every way, then the air she breathed must be holographic too. Real enough to oxygenate her blood, but like those doors something that may vanish at any given moment. The thought made her hyperventilate in sympathy for a phantom suffocation.

She was getting tired and the awful dark beyond her flashlight beam seemed to grow denser as she walked, always moving and never progressing. One door closed, another door opened. Somebody was toying with her, with both of them. The only thing that made her walk was a faint but desperate hope, a double incentive—that she may be allowed to find a way out, or to find Lieutenant Reed. They had been separated for a reason, that she knew, but it was clear she was not the one they wanted.

She was being diverted, occupied, perhaps led to one definite goal, perhaps not; but if these beings had intended to kill her, they would have done so by now. She was no match, it would have been easy. No. They were, they must be, merely detaining her while they attended to more important matters. She had to believe that, had to believe she was in no real danger.

Whoever they' were, it was Malcolm Reed that had captured their interest.

-------------------------------

Trip's spread hands poised open as he fell to grab the rungs five meters below—a nasty jolt to his joints, no doubt, but the only way to cover five meters in two seconds, and a shock he was prepared for. He had a keen catch and a good eye, should have no trouble in regaining his hold; but for that split second in time, he was left entirely to gravity in a free fall that would shatter every bone in his body should he fail.

One second, an eternity, playing on the prayer he had chosen to risk. Chancing he would lose, and lose it all, including his life. Chancing he would win, could catch hold, and would survive it.

His splayed fingers glanced against the ladder, twisted, tightened. Both hands found the rung as he had hoped. A shockwave jolted through his bones, jarring shoulder sockets and teeth, and then he was still, and it held.

There was a snap as the rung broke.

Trip clawed hastily at the next, missed it, scrambled as he fell to take hold of the cold metal bars his hands grazed against . . . and found purchase, catching the last before the ladder discontinued for as far as his eye could see into the deep. His communicator was jolted from his unzipped pocket and spun balletically end-over-end as it fell into the black at his feet. He clung with both goose fleshed arms to the ladder, wrapping himself around it, gasping for air and waiting for his shocked eyesight to return. The squall of the groaning lift car crescendoed above him like the creak of an ancient galleon braving high winds.

Trip had dropped past the opening in the shaft wall, by the size of it now he was close enough to see an air vent of some kind, maybe a maintenance hatch. It blew its pale draft out a few rungs above, and thankfully, Trip clambered up those he had missed, caught the edge, and threw himself inside. As he fell into the vent beyond, his momentum carrying him from the rim and off down the slide-like bottom of the pipe, an almighty crash shattered the silence. Behind him, the shaft collapsed in on itself, great clouds of choking dust pounding up to him, the sharp impact reverberating through the vent plates over which he shot— he slid unstoppably down into the vent with no hope of stopping.

Below him in this air vent, very, very faint, came the chopping burr of the ventilation system, still fully operational.

-------------------------------

You can breathe again now, you know.

He had forgotten to. Plummeting blindly down the tubular vent around unseen curves and twists, Trip had very nearly forgotten to. Tentatively, he forced a breath past the blockade of trapped air in his throat, feeling the gush on his dry lips. His ears popped.

Below him, the purr became a thunder. A white noise continuous and pounding as a waterfall punched up to him, louder as he slid on his thigh down the virtually vertical tube, accelerating towards the sound, grazing his right leg on the rivets that held the vent's multiple sections together as one piece.

The chopping, whirring sound was near. Very, very near.

He was flung around a bend in the shaft into a hurricane rush of air that blasted up around him, shooting by so swiftly that he could not breathe. There was only a crushing burn in his lungs; the oxygen did not seem to come. He waited for the pocket to canon past but it did not; it did not lessen. This was no airless pocket.

He forced his head down into the rush, his eyes closed to slits, and tried to focus. For a moment his eyes watered, stinging so badly he couldn't see a blind thing; but he dragged his sleeve across his face, and looked again.

The fan blades were still spinning. And he was careering unstoppably towards them.