AN: Sorry for the lack of update last week! Life happened, but now I'm back... with foreshadowing!
The first tunnel Kes led them to was a bust. At the base of the second tunnel—a steeply-sloping passage that meandered drunkenly, lit only intermittently by weak lights—Sulu stopped to adjust his tricorder. He didn't want to waste time walking all the way to the end of the tunnel, but he didn't want to risk missing Chekov and Kati, either. He hoped making a few tweaks to the tricorder's scanning function would extend its range, and was in the middle of a particularly delicate adjustment when Trance said, "Harrison's not part of your crew, is he?"
"Not... no, not really," he answered, distracted. If I narrow the scanning parameters... Of course, with the way the captain kept allowing Khan on away missions, he could see how Trance might get the wrong impression.
"Is he a passenger, then?"
"You could say that." Now boost the power flow... He supposed a prisoner was a kind of passenger.
"He seems different than the rest of the Federations I've met so far."
"I don't know how you can tell," Kes said, as Sulu started a new scan. "They're all different." Her voice filled with wonder. "Different colors, different shapes—I never thought I'd see so many different kinds of people."
"They're not in this one, either," Sulu interrupted. He snapped his tricorder shut. "Where do we go next?"
They retraced their steps from the tunnel mouth, through a little-used service corridor, and out into the open of a quiet side street. Kes pointed along the wall of the main cavern. "The next tunnel is about half a kel that way," she said.
Sulu resisted the urge to check his chrono. He felt the urgency of each passing minute, an urgency increased by the way the cavern occasionally trembled from the Caretaker's assault. He had no idea how much a kel was, but he hoped it wasn't far.
"We'd better hurry," he said, starting down the street in the direction Kes indicated.
"Just a moment," Trance said. "Kes, how many tunnels are left?"
"Five that I know of. Why?"
"Can you show us?"
"Of course."
Kes led them to the nearest intersection, where a tall metal-and-stone pillar stood in the center of the cross-streets. There were more people here, hurrying on some errand or huddled in doorways, talking. They seemed remarkably calm. Sulu wondered if they didn't yet know what was happening, or if they simply had absolute faith in the Caretaker.
The pillar turned out to be some kind of public computer terminal. Kes tapped a panel on its surface and a large section of what Sulu had taken for metal brightened and displayed a map of the city. She pointed to a few spots around the perimeter of the cavern.
"These are the access points to the tunnels. These two here are the ones we've already checked."
Sulu gauged the distances between the tunnels and groaned. They had a lot of ground to cover.
Trance slid her finger over the smooth surface of the pillar and stopped at one of the points Kes had pointed out. "Let's check this one next."
"That one?" Sulu said. "That one's all the way across the city! If they're not there, we'll have to waste time backtracking to check the remaining tunnels. We should go here next." He pointed to the next tunnel closer to them.
"Here," Trance insisted. "I… have a good feeling about this."
"A feeling isn't much to go on," Sulu said.
Kes offered a small, shy smile. "I've learned to trust her feelings. Come on, this way is fastest."
Resigned, Sulu followed the two women down the street. Ahead of him, he heard Kes ask, "Why are you so interested in Harrison, anyway?"
Trance flicked her tail in a gesture Sulu couldn't interpret. "He just seems... familiar, that's all."
"Sulu to Kirk."
"Excuse me," Kirk said to the Ocampa doctor he was speaking to, and turned away to give himself a little privacy. The doctor took the opportunity to slip away, clearly uninterested in continuing to be questioned by the aliens. "Kirk here."
Sulu's excited voice rang tinnily from his communicator. "We've found them, Captain! They're in one of the tunnels. I can't see them yet, but they're up there. We're going after them."
Relief rushed through him, leaving him light-headed. Beside him, Khan visibly relaxed, though he didn't entirely lose his wary poise. "I'm glad to hear it, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said. "Call for transport when you have them. We'll meet you on the ship. Kirk to Enterprise."
"Enterprise here."
"Three to beam up."
"Stand by." There was a pause, and then Spock said, "Captain, we are unable to get a lock on you. The weapons fire from the array has irradiated the planet's crust. The transport sensors cannot locate the breaches in the security barrier."
"Can you adjust the sensors to compensate?"
Another pause. "Mr. Scott believes it may be possible with significant recalibration of the sensors."
Recalibrations that would no doubt take time, and lots of it. Sh'athylnik said something the Universal Translator refused to render, but Kirk happened to know was a particularly foul Andorian swearword.
"Tell him to keep working on the engines," Kirk said. "There's another way out of here. Kirk to Sulu."
"Sulu here."
"Change of plans. Where are you, exactly?"