The female Klingon cursed loudly at her computer and then slammed her fists on it so hard, sparks flew from a crack in the corner of the console.
Efet couldn't read Klingon, but she had a suspicion that the computer was giving an error message. Her captor seemed to be trying to access the computer files, but Efet guessed she was locked out. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. No matter how sloppy Klingons might be, Efet knew they must keep some kind of files on all their prisoners, including her. As neither Klingon guard seemed to know anything about her, the simplest explanation was they couldn't access any file on her or Deleth.
Deciding to try her luck, Efet cleared her throat and said, "Pardon me."
The female Klingon snarled something at her, but the dark circles around her eyes gave away her tiredness and her snarl came across as somewhat perfunctory. Efet was no longer as intimidated as she had been an hour ago.
"I'm very hungry. Do you have any rations I could eat - preferably something not still wiggling?"
The female Klingon eyed her up and down, then stomped over to an alcove. To Efet's surprise, she barked an order and a cup of something steamy materialized. A replicator! Efet didn't know the Klingons had a replicator.
The female Klingon handed her the cup, then fetched a small container for herself and sat on the bunk across from Efet. She popped the top off her container, revealing a tangle of gagh, which she devoured with gusto. The sight turned Efet's stomach but she was hungry, so she put it out of her mind and tried a sip of the soup or stew - what it was exactly, she didn't know, but it had some vegetables floating in a sort of broth with a few chunks of meat. It tasted undercooked, but knowing Klingon preferences, Efet figured she should be grateful it wasn't raw.
"Do you know how to operate computers?" the female Klingon demanded to know through a mouthful of gagh.
The truth was, if she had access to a translator PADD, Efet could probably have hacked the Klingon computer in a few hours. But she wasn't going to give herself away and give the Klingons any kind of advantage. "No," she lied. "Before I was imprisoned here, I was a geologist." That had been her mother's profession, one Efet felt she could fake convincingly.
"Bah!" The female Klingon didn't bother hiding her disappointment. "The fools who imprisoned you here are without honor! Where is the glory in defeating one as weak as you in the hunt?"
Efet felt a little insulted, but still there was an undercurrent of pity in the female Klingon's tone, so she went with it. "I wondered that myself for many days. I still don't know why my people weren't allowed to ransom me."
The female Klingon through her head back and laughed at her. "Ransom! You think Cardassians would bother to ransom one as lowly as you?" Her body shook with the force of her laughter. "Your people are fortunate that Gowron didn't rain fire from orbit and scour your entire planetary system clean of their kind! You have deluded yourself, girl. The Cardassians are not putting up ransoms for geologists."
Efet cringed. She had assumed that her people had inquired after her, made offers for her safe return - but what if the female Klingon was right? What if they had forsaken her? A ball of despair formed in her chest, squeezing tightly. She shook her head a little, clearing the thoughts. She mustn't let this woman play with her mind, make her doubt herself or her people. Deciding to redirect the conversation, Efet tried, "Were you a warrior in the invasion fleet, then?"
"No," the female Klingon's mirth faded and her eyes went dark and troubled. "No, I was a healer before I was exiled to this hellhole."
A healer! Efet now knew why this woman's first instinct had been to try to give her medical care for the 'rape' she assumed Efet had suffered. Now that she thought on it, of course this woman assumed she'd been raped - consensual sex with a Romulan was probably nigh-unimaginable to a female Klingon. She dearly would like to know why her captor had been exiled here, but it didn't really matter and more questions might make her angry or suspicious. Efet assumed it was due to some kind of inscrutably tribal Klingon politics. She was rather relieved that the female Klingon at least hadn't been slaughtering Efet's people personally during the invasion.
The door flew open with a bang and the male Klingon entered, grabbing Efet by the arm and yanking her to her feet. Her half-eaten blow of stew fell to the floor and shattered.
"What is the meaning of this?!" The female Klingon actually hurled her container of gagh at the male, who swatted it aside and thrust a finger in her face.
"The Romulan has been trying to tamper with the weapons mounted on the roof. We should kill his female and put her head on a stick! That will drive him into the open for a fight!"
"You fool!" the female Klingon said even as the male began to drag Efet back down the hallway, her feet slipping out from under her in the splattered soup. "Release her at once! I am-"
"I am taking command!" The male Klingon slammed his fist to his chest. "You are no warrior. Unlike you, I am not content to let the Romulan slit my throat in the dark of the night, he will face me and die in battle." Efet begged the female Klingon for help with her eyes as the male Klingon continued to drag her away.
"I said release her!" The female Klingon drew a phaser and pointed it at the male.
"You dare! For this taHqeq, you would threaten me?" The male Klingon drew a wicked looking bladed knife, dragged Efet up in front of him like a shield, and wedged the blade under her chin. Cold fear washed over her as Efet felt a dribble of blood run down her neck. She desperately didn't want to die like this.
The female Klingon fired off a phaser shot but missed, and the console slightly to the left of Efet and the male Klingon exploded in sparks and sizzling pieces of electronics. The lights dimmed, then came back online dimmer than before. The male Klingon threw Efet at the female Klingon, knocking her off balance, then sprang onto them both. Efet scrambled to get out of the way as the two grappled on the floor of the narrow hallway. She crawled towards the door, taking the opportunity, no matter how slight, to escape back to the jungle and Deleth.
Behind her, she heard a strangled cry. A hand grabbed her by the boot and dragged her back, her hands grabbing desperately for purchase. The male Klingon hauled her back to her feet, again placing the knife to her throat. The blade was now bloody, and when she glanced down, Efet saw that the female Klingon lay there with a massive open wound in her chest, from which blood bubbled out. She was still trying to drag herself upright. A shriek escaped Efet before she could smother it.
"A better death than she deserves," the male Klingon said coldly.
He kicked open the door and they stepped into the blinding sunlight. "Romulan! I have your woman! Show yourself or she dies - now!"
Silently, Efet pleaded with Deleth not to approach and get himself killed trying to save her. At least, if Deleth survived, he could get word to her family and let them know what happened to her.
Movement in the foliage. The male Klingon's cruel face twisted in glee. "Yes, show yourself!"
Deleth stepped from the cover of the jungle. He held his hands up in front of him, fingers spread wide, to show he had no weapons.
"No," whispered Efet in despair.
"Take the blade from her throat," Deleth told the Klingon. "And you can have me."
Chuckling, the Klingon lowered his knife, but kept his punishing grip on Efet. She couldn't take her eyes off Deleth, but he was watching the Klingon's every move. He edged a little closer, and she could see him working out his angle of attack. If she could see it - the Klingon could, as well.
Deleth's eyes flitted downwards, for just a fraction of a second, to the ground between the male Klingon's feet. Efet saw it, but didn't have time to wonder why, before the male Klingon bellowed in surprise.
"Baktag!" gasped out the female Klingon, from where she'd dragged herself down the hallway to grab the male Klingon by the back of his sash. Thrown off balance for just a moment, he flailed. Efet saw Deleth surge forward, covering the ground between them, and then the female Klingon cry out as the male kicked at her. She had a split second to react.
She pushed her hips back into the male Klingon's leg, grabbed his arm and tried a throw Deleth had shown her. She had not nearly the bodily strength to fight an enraged Klingon, nor the fighting skills, nor even the nerve. But gravity was good to her. The male Klingon, now completely unbalanced, slammed into the ground and lost his grip on his knife.
Deleth was on him in a heartbeat. They collided with just a grunt - Deleth's face flushed green with the strain of grappling with the male Klingon. Shaking, Efet scrambled for the knife. Behind her, the female Klingon slumped and went still.
Grabbing the knife, Efet desperately tried to remember where a Klingon's weak spots were. Didn't they have several backup organs? She had no time to waste, as the male Klingon had Deleth on the ground and he was smashing Deleth's head into the dirt. She leaped onto his back, straddled his shoulders, took a handful of hair, and drew the blade across his throat.
Deleth yelped as blood splattered onto his face. The Klingon tried to turn on Efet, but she tossed the knife aside rather than let him take it from her. He swung at her, but Efet rolled out of the way. Deleth was back in the fight, throwing the male Klingon to the ground and raining blows on him. Stumbling over the the female Klingon blocking the doorway, Efet made for the phaser laying on the floor.
"Deleth, duck!" she said as she stepped back into the sunlight. Obligingly, he obeyed her. Not knowing which setting was which, she turned on the phaser, aimed it straight at the bloody Klingon, and fired. He disintegrated.
Staring in shock at the spot where the Klingon had been just moments before, Deleth turned to her. His shirt was nearly torn off, he was covered in the Klingon's reddish blood, and one of his eyes was almost swollen shut. Efet wanted to cry at the sight of him. She wanted to hold him forever and never let go. She made it a few steps to him, fell to her knees, and collapsed into his arms. "I thought I was going to lose you," she wept.
"Never, never," he promised, pressing her close and stroking her hair.
The female Klingon was dead. Efet looked sorrowfully on her. She had tried to care for Efet, in her own way, and she sorry she had died on this wretched prison world, but at least she had died fighting, as befitted a Klingon. They dragged the body out of the doorway and into the second bunk room. Neither one really knew what a Klingon's death rituals were like, so they opted to leave her body alone.
"I think by all rights, this belongs to you," Deleth told her as he handed over the Klingon's bloody knife.
"What would I want that for?" Efet shrank away from it.
"This is a d'k tahg, a ceremonial knife. Taking one of these in combat with a Klingon warrior is no easy feat." Deleth smiled at her, and his dark eyes were warm and fond.
She delicately pinched the handle between her forefinger and thumb. "If you insist..."
Once inside, they took a few minutes to lock down the compound and tend to their wounds. In the bunk room, Deleth found some garments, the cleanest of which they tore into strips for bandages. Their clothes were almost completely wrecked, so they dressed themselves in whatever would fit. Deleth found a plain black undershirt, which he donned, and Efet found what appeared to be the female Klingon's clothing. She was tall for a Cardassian, and the female Klingon had been short for a Klingon, so she made it work. When she was finished, she wore a segmented leather skirt and a sort of armored bustier that, to Efet's amusement, revealed a great deal of cleavage. "How do I look?" she asked, turning in a circle for him.
"You look like a warrior goddess," Deleth told her approvingly.
She stifled a giggle. Then, she swallowed and said, "Deleth, I- I've been thinking -"
He drew himself up a little straighter. "Yes?" He couldn't hide the hopefulness in his voice.
"For a moment out there, I thought you were going to die trying to save me. I desperately wanted you to live. I desperately want you." Her blue eyes pierced him to his core, and Deleth, despite all his bruises and aches and pains, felt nothing but pure joy at her words, to hear her acknowledging her feelings for him. He had cursed himself over and over in the jungle, for letting her get captured, for putting her in harm's way again and again. And above all, for selfishly demanding so much of her without giving in return. If Efet wanted to return to her people, he decided he'd let her go if it meant knowing she was safe. He could live on as long as he knew she was alive out there somewhere.
"I don't know for sure if I can live among your people." Efet was shaking a little. "But maybe that is something I can think about while we wait for our rescue."
"That you are even considering it is good to hear," Deleth told her. "And maybe more than I deserve." He dearly wanted to hold her again, to use other methods to convince her to stay with him, but right now they had other tasks to complete. Efet was horrified when she inspected the busted console in the hallway, where one Klingon had fired at the other. "This is the main power array!" she cried. "This compound is running on backup power!"
"How long will the power last?"
"I have to find a translator program-"
"I can read Klingon well enough," Deleth assured her. She managed to access one of the computer terminals, and he read the report. "Ten hours at most."
"We could shut down the power to conserve it," Efet suggested.
"If we do that, we won't have force fields."
"Who's going to break in?"
"... Fair enough." Deleth tried to get the computer to give him a map of the compound. "There must be a hangar with the hovercraft in it. Here!" He tapped his finger on the screen excitedly.
"Let's go," Efet said. "I don't care how tired I am, I'll have a subspace message encoded and we'll send it this evening. We're getting out of here!"
Accessing the hangar proved more difficult. Just accessing the computer wasn't enough; it required a thumbprint code. "I'll be right back," Deleth told Efet grimly. He returned carrying a severed thumb.
"Ugh!" Efet recoiled.
"The female Klingon won't need it anymore," he told her. He pressed the thumb to the panel, and the doors opened. They stepped into the hangar... and stood shock still in disbelief.
"This is outrageous," Efet said.
"It's empty." Deleth couldn't believe his eyes. Aside from a few spare parts and tools, there was nothing in the hangar. No hovercraft whatsoever. Their whole plan had hinged on getting over the wall with the Klingon hovercraft!