For Amanda, time had essentially stopped. Reality felt heavy and slow; there was a distinct ringing in her ears that dampened the sound around her. The Romulan man was yelling at both of them and Sarek almost shouting. Amanda stared at him dumbly.
"Amanda!" Sarek growled.
"Get in there," barked the Romulan, gesturing to the cell with the phaser.
She found her voice. "He wants us to get in the cell."
"That," Sarek said firmly, "is not an option. If we back into that cell we may never come out-"
"Silence," yelled the Romulan.
Amanda was a linguist, not a translator, and switching back and forth between languages was difficult enough, especially when she had virtually no practice in actually speaking Romulan.
"Tell him we are not with the others," Sarek added, shaking his head and pointing to the bodies on the floor.
"Um… we… we are… not with them," Amanda stammered slowly in Romulan, hoping she was using her direct objects correctly and motioning to the men on the floor like Sarek was doing.
"Lies," hissed the Romulan.
"He doesn't believe us," Amanda muttered.
"Tell him our names and ask him for his," Sarek insisted. "Do not tell him I am an ambassador."
"I am Amanda," she said, holding her right hand up to her chest and using her left hand to gesture to Sarek, "and he is Sarek. How are you called?"
"Get in the cell!" the Romulan screamed.
"I don't think he's interested in making new friends," Amanda whined.
"If he wanted us dead he would have killed us already," Sarek replied. "Ask him if there are other Romulans on board or if he can pilot this vessel by himself."
"Vessel?" Amanda asked in surprise.
"Yes, I believe we are on board a Romulan ship that Bentham commandeered."
The Romulan took a hostile step forward with the phaser still raised to Sarek's chest, clearly uncomfortable with the pair of them conferring between themselves.
"Um… are there… more? More like you? More Romulans? Are you-"
"No," snapped the Romulan. "You killed them…"
He continued to talk very quickly through gritted teeth and used several words Amanda didn't know, but she guessed he was explaining how their captors had tortured and starved his crewmates to death. It was believable enough: his hair was longish and matted and he had a beard of moderate length and smelled terrible.
"Look at them," Amanda said more boldly, taking a step forward to point at the body of the smaller man. "He… that man… hurt me. He hurt you also. Yes? Look at him now. Would we… do this to... allies?"
The Romulan studied her and she took another step forward as a sign of good faith. She noticed Sarek stiffen as she squeezed next to him in the narrow walkway of the prison.
"Tell me, how are you called?" she pleaded with him again. "We do not want to be your enemy."
"I am called Riov Llhran," he declared, phaser still defensively raised.
"Jolan'tru, Llhran," she said, trying to smile.
Sarek glanced at her and she explained, "His name is Llhran. I think he is, or was, the captain of this ship."
"Why does he not speak Romulan?" asked Llhran pointing with his free hand at Sarek. "And you are human. Why do you speak my language and he does not?"
It was the same question that plagued Amanda since they'd greeted each other several minutes ago.
"He wants to know why you look like him and don't speak his language. To be honest, I'm kind of curious too."
Sarek slowly dropped his hands, eyeing Llhran carefully for further signs of aggression and Amanda did the same.
"I do not know," Sarek confessed. "Tell him I am Vulcan. It is possible we share a common ancestor."
"We do not know. Sarek is… Vulcan," she explained, substituting the English word for Vulcan as she wasn't aware of one in Romulan. "He is not Romulan. He… he thinks that you share a family?"
Llhran looked at her in confusion and she tried to find a better word for ancestor. "I think you… share a… culture? From a long time before now."
The communicator on the dead man's belt chirped again but Llhran ignored it and moved closer to Sarek, carefully examining his features. Sarek did likewise. Amanda watched the two of them and suddenly noticed how pale Sarek was and observed that he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. Llhran lowered the phaser to a forty-five degree angle and the communicator chimed again.
"Tell him we can discuss our lineage later, but for now we need to devise a strategy to seize control of the ship. Explain that we need to work together," Sarek said.
"Now we need to… take… take back the ship," Amanda explained. "We need to think of a way we can do this. We will help you. You will help us?"
The Romulan lowered the phaser further but continued to hold it at the ready.
"Explain that he needs our help and-"
Amanda cut Sarek off and added, "This is your ship. You know this ship. We know the humans. We will… be better together. We will win together."
Llhran lowered his weapon and nodded, but said, "We are not friends. We are only temporary allies."
Sarek looked at Amanda quizzically, leaving her to explain, "Let's just say I don't think he's going to invite us to a family dinner any time soon but he has agreed to work as 'temporary allies.'"
The communicator chirped a fourth time and Sarek bent down to retrieve it. Llhran stiffened and Amanda held up her hands pleadingly and said, "We do not want the other humans to be… nervous."
"Suspicious? Yes," Llhran nodded.
Sarek flipped it open and instantly a string of profanities burst through the speaker in anger for making the caller wait.
"So did you get anything yet?" the voice finally demanded.
"No," Sarek said briskly.
"Well hurry up. We're only six hours out. If we could get it in the next hour we might still make it. So quit screwing around, got it?"
Sarek paused briefly before cautiously saying, "Ok."
"Seriously, I don't care what you have to do to her."
"Yes. I'm trying," Sarek replied in what she assumed was the closest approximation to casual human speech he could manage and clicked the communicator closed.
He turned back to Llhran and said, "If you are this ship's captain, what do you propose is the best way to regain control of it?"
Amanda translated as best as she could and Llhran bumped past them, sidestepped the body of the larger man, and walked toward the end of the hallway. He motioned for them to follow and Amanda shrugged and looked back at Sarek. He looked terrible.
"Are you ok?" she whispered.
"I shall be, when this is over. For now, we must focus on our task."
Llhran disappeared into a side room some distance up ahead and they followed. She detected a slowness and deliberate nature to Sarek's movement that was deeply worrying. Had they tortured him too?
As she formed the thought, they passed the cell where Andros and the other man had tied her to the strange reclining chair and used the small box-like instrument on her. It had looked so unassuming; until of course they turned it on and she would have sworn her ribcage was turning inside out. It had been pain like nothing she'd ever endured, and seeing where it all had happened just minutes ago filled her with intense anxiety.
Then, just like it had earlier, she felt a serene sort of peace that almost bordered on euphoria. Several times she had been so close to telling them about Zetar: she would have said or done anything to make the pain stop if not for that comforting sensation of calm that had somehow managed to outcompete her agony.
She looked over at Sarek and saw he was watching her tentatively. She wanted to cry. She wanted to talk to him, hug him, hold him, kiss him… But he was right. They weren't out of the woods yet.
She and Sarek entered a small room at the end of the hallway next to the entrance to the brig. Llhran stood before several black-screened computer terminals displaying what looked like blueprints to the ship and other data files. While she found reading Romulan far easier than speaking it, most of what she was looking at was technical jargon. Llhran pulled up another image of what looked like a top view of a ship, scanned through it, and froze the image.
"Here," he barked, looking at Sarek but speaking to Amanda.
"What is that?" she asked.
He sighed and began to explain but she couldn't make sense of most of it.
"You talk… fast. Please. Slow," she said in frustration.
"This is where we have weapons," he replied in annoyance, speaking slowly with a tone she took for scathing sarcasm.
"I think what he's pointing to is an armory," she told Sarek.
"What is the best way to get there?" he asked.
She translated his question and a ten minute struggle ensued that stretched the limits of her language abilities and made copious use of hand signals, vigorous pointing at diagrams of the ship, and what she guessed were probably Romulan expletives. She also learned that Llhran believed there were only five other humans aboard and guessed they would be operating the ship from the central engineering room with such a small crew.
To her frustration, Sarek continued to badger her to ask Llhran about all kinds of technical things. She had no idea what a "lateral plasma conduit" or an "artificial quantum singularity" were in Federation Standard English, let alone Romulan.
"Simply ask if-"
"Look," she snapped at Sarek. "I'm trying my best."
"You are frustrated, but you are performing commendably. I am trying to explain that Llhran's plan has a high probability of failure. We can not reasonably expect to seize control of this vessel by force in our present collective physical condition."
Amanda looked at both Sarek and Llhran. The former looked as though he were on the verge of a heart failure and the latter appeared on the verge of fatal starvation. It was also taking her considerable effort just to stand, so she had to agree.
"So what do you want to do?" she asked him.
"Ask him if there is a way to vent the ship from a secure location."
"Vent it?"
"Depressurize certain parts so that we can harm them without harming ourselves. It is the most practical-" he shuddered and gripped his ribcage and she put her hand on his arm in worry.
"Just ask him," Sarek insisted.
She turned to Llhran and asked, "Is there a method… we want to open this ship… to the space outside. But not hurt us. Only them."
Llhran gave her a surprised look but paused to think.
"That is a good plan," he said. "We can do it from the battle bridge. I am not certain, but I do not think anyone would be there."
"Battle bridge?" she asked, wondering if she was translating his words correctly.
"The area where leaders conduct battle. Fight wars?" Llhran explained in exasperation.
Another strained conversation unfolded, and after ten more tense minutes they had formed a rough plan. Llhran insisted the best way was to exit the brig and immediately enter a series of engineering conduits and crawl to a remote area near the center of the ship. When they had all agreed, Llhran cautiously unlocked the entrance to the brig and they filed out into a dark hallway.
Two meters ahead to the left, Llhran ducked down and began pulling at a piece of paneling with his skeletal fingers. Amanda bent down and with her nails was able to open it just wide enough for him to get his fingers in and provide enough leverage to pull it from the wall with a loud "thunk" to expose a crawlspace just less than a meter wide.
"We must hurry," Llhran mused. "You go."
Amanda balked. Not only did she not want a Romulan she barely trusted behind her with a phaser, she was still wearing the same white and pink dress cut above her knees that she had worn to the beach with Sarek and was wasn't eager to give him a show.
"You go," she insisted. "You know where to go. Keep weapon. I go behind you. I am small. I am not able to harm you easy."
She cringed at the rudimentary nature of her language, but it seemed to get the point across. They were severely exposed standing in the open passageway and they risked discovery with each passing second. Llhran scowled and glared at Sarek before relenting.
Amanda motioned for Sarek to go but he refused and simply whispered, "You should have gone first. But it is too late for that now. I think it would be better if I went last, should anyone access the conduit from this end."
"But…" she stammered.
"I appreciate your desire for modesty and I promise not to look," he added, glancing down at her skirt. "You can recover from mortification. You cannot recover from being dead, which is what will inevitably happen if we are discovered here."
She sighed and stooped down and went in on her hands and knees. Warm air brushed her face and she gasped. It was like crawling into an oven and the stench wafting off of Llhran's dirty body made it almost unbearable. Sarek came in behind her and pulled the door to the conduit back into place. Llhran had moved ahead ten meters to a juncture and was curled into an awkward posture in the small space.
She began to crawl, the metal grating digging into her knees. When she reached him, he looked at her contemptuously and gestured with his free hand to the right branch of the duct and said, "We go this way."
They continued to inch along about a meter behind their Romulan escort. She was panting heavily after crawling nearly thirty meters and there were still ten more to go until they would hit what appeared to be a dead end.
It was blazing hot in the conduit and she felt weak, sweaty, and shaky. She could hear Sarek behind her softy grunting from either pain or exertion. It frightened her to see him in such a weakened state.
Llhran stopped when he reached a panel on the other end and signaled for them to stop and be quiet. She sat down and leaned against the rounded wall, feeling so exhausted that she wondered how much longer she could remain conscious. She hadn't slept in nearly two days and the only thing she'd had to eat in almost three was a bowl of borscht hours before. And it was so hot. Her eyelids were starting to droop when she felt Sarek's hand gently touch her face.
"Miss Grayson, do not say anything. Just listen."
She breathed deeply and looked listlessly in his direction, wondering if she was hallucinating or dreaming. His skin was ashen and his eyes were glassy.
"Our position is precarious. Llhran no longer has any use for us. He will almost certainly try to kill us once we have secured the ship."
"Huh?"
"Think, Miss Grayson. What is the end state of this situation? He told you that we were only temporary allies. Once we have achieved our common goal, we will not be able to peacefully part ways."
"What do you mean?" It was slowly dawning on her that she was talking to Sarek but they weren't actually speaking.
"The point, Miss Grayson is that we should consider the inevitability that we shall have to kill him, otherwise he will kill us."
"But there's already been so much killing," she thought sadly. "He hasn't done anything to hurt us."
"No, he has not. Not yet. And while I admire your ethics and in nearly all circumstances would agree, do you imagine he will just let us go and return home to Romulus like this never happened? Even if he wanted to, I do not see how he could."
She heard a loud clanging sound from Llhran's direction and slightly rolled her head on the wall to see him cautiously exiting the conduit.
"We have to find another way," she begged. "You're a diplomat. Figure it out."
Sake released his hand from her face and she willed herself back onto all fours and managed to slink the final two meters out of the engineering duct and found herself in a dark room with large view screens and a handful of computer terminals.
It was much cooler in this room than it had been in the conduit but it was still far from comfortable. She noticed Llhran was swaying slightly and gripped a console to steady himself. She saw the phaser still clutched in his hand and thought about Sarek's words with a shocking indifference. She felt half dead already. Sarek soon emerged from behind her and was subtly shivering and slightly hunched forward.
Llhran was speaking and she tried to focus but her mind felt foggy. He touched his thumb to some sort of biometric scanner and the terminal sprang to life and illuminated his face in an eerie way. She watched his fingers move around the screen and then all the main screens came online and depicted what looked to be various schematics around the ship.
"Ask him if this area is secured," Sarek said. There was a distinctive labored quality to her breathing that worried her.
"Is this place safe?" Amanda asked Llhran.
"Yes," he replied, moving to an adjacent computer terminal to begin working. "This part of the ship does not appear on diagrams as a separate bridge. It appears as an empty storage area. They would not look here."
"But will they not see you… working… on the computer? And know we are here?" she asked.
"This part of the ship runs on its own computers. It is not part of the rest of the ship. But it can command parts of the ship. Tell your friend that his plan will not work so easy."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I read nine humans on this ship. You are one. There are three here," he said, pointing to an area on the left side of the ship. "That is an eating space. But there are five more in the main engineering space."
"So what?" she asked. "That is where you said they would go. Yes?"
"They are in the central room. Where the… where the main power source is."
She could tell he wanted to explain the problem in more technical detail and wanted to find words she could understand before he said, "We can not vent that part of the ship. Too dangerous. It is not possible."
"Can we… make them go somewhere else?" she asked.
Llhran looked back at the computer terminal thoughtfully and began shifting through more screens. It horrified her that she was discussing the finer details of killing other people with a Romulan starship captain. She thought again about Sarek's earlier remark about killing Llhran and how much the idea had sickened her. But was that really so different than what they were about to do?
She wanted to say that Llhran was different because he didn't ask to be put in this situation, but then again, neither had she. The men Sarek had killed earlier, that was in self-defense and they had tortured her. But these other people, they hadn't hurt her, had they? True, they stood by knowing full well what was happening in the ship's brig and the one man had said he didn't care what they did to her. But did that mean they deserved to die?
She began to feel overwhelmed at the idea that her conscience would never be the same after this, if she even got out of this alive at all. These kinds of ethics were easy to debate in philosophy class but another thing entirely to wield. She wondered if decompression was painful, and whether the amount of pain made a difference, and what other variables constituted a "just" or "good" death. This wasn't fair. She felt tears pricking the corners of her eyes and she gasped.
"What is he saying, Miss Grayson?" Sarek mumbled.
Llhran was pointing at a third screen and rolling his eyes at her inattention. He was using more technical words, but it sounded as though he were suggesting contaminating the engine room and forcing them into another part of the ship. She gazed down at the phaser in his hand, and then looked back to Sarek. He looked halfway in the grave.
Llhran clucked his tongue at her and she turned to face him. Their eyes locked and his eyebrows rose in obvious impatience.
"Miss Grayson?" Sarek asked again.
She looked from Llhran back to Sarek and smiled sadly. There had to be a way out of this. Suddenly the tiniest flicker of an idea crossed her mind. Why not? They had nothing to lose.
"Riov Llhran, what will you do when this is done?" she asked.
He shook his head and sneered at her question. "Explain your meaning."
"When we kill them… you will kill us. Yes?"
He stared at her and said nothing for a long time before eventually admitting, "It would be my duty."
"Then what? Will you go home to Romulus?"
His expression softened and he remained silent.
"But… you are not able, are you?" she continued with earnest sadness. "Not… like you are. Not now. Not after these humans took your ship. Killed your people. What will you say to your… leaders?
"Romulus is my home," he insisted.
"Yes," she agreed with a nod and a wan smile. "And Earth is my home. If you go home… Romulus, you will be punished and they will make a war, yes? With Earth and the other planets in… in…um…"
She couldn't think of a word for a "federation" in Romulan and wondered if they even had one. The Romulan Star Empire wasn't famous for alliances.
"It would be their imperial duty," Llhran said, cutting her off.
"Miss Grayson?" Sarek asked, moving up behind her to her left.
"Is there a way for you to go home without… shame?" she asked, wondering if that was the best way she could put it.
"What is the purpose of these questions?" Llhran snapped.
"You want to live," she explained. "You could… destroy the ship. Yes? From here? Kill the other people. And us. And yourself. And you would have no shame. Why not… do that?"
Llhran remained motionless, his face angry and pensive. Amanda continued.
"But what if… you said your ship was destroyed and Romulus found you in a… in a…" she faltered on the word for escape pod, but he seemed to be understanding her suggestion.
"You would ask me to abandon my own ship?"
"Yes," she said with a wild hope, before adding, "We will too. Abandon it. Apart. Me and Sarek would go home to Earth. You would go home to Romulus."
"And let those people have my ship? Or your Lloann'na?" So that was the word for Federation.
"No," she said. "No one gets it. We will destroy it."
"Miss Grayson," insisted Sarek. "What is the plan?"
He was standing next to her now and she turned her head and looked at him lovingly, grinned, and declared, "To live. If Llhran agrees."
"I do not understand your-"
"Yes," Llhran answered, interrupting Sarek. He frowned, paced a few steps, and set the phaser down on a nearby computer console.
"What are you discussing with him?" Sarek asked.
"You said killing each other would be 'inevitable.' It turns out you might have been wrong," she explained.
"I do not take your meaning."
Llhran interrupted him again. He was talking fast and was back to using jargon. In addition to the ship's schematics, he was frantically flipping through star charts on a separate console.
"We're getting out of here," she told Sarek. "All three of us. Well, not together but-"
"We will not have much time to reach the escape pods," Llhran barked, giving her an annoyed look.
"Riov Llhran, please stop being loud," she said in exasperation. "And talk slow. I have… My head. It hurts."
He sneered at her briefly and then burst into a fit of laughter that she found contagious. Her ribs hurt so badly that laughing felt like agony and she doubled over as she tried to contain herself. Sarek stared at both of them as if they had gone insane.
"Would you care to enlighten me about the source of your amusement?"
"It's not really that funny," she dismissed, grimacing.
They spent the another twenty minutes ironing out their course of action. Between Llhran's knowledge of the ship, Sarek's knowledge of physics, her creative translation skills, and Sarek and Llhran's careful analysis of their current position, they devised a plan to breach the containment of the Tafv's singularity warp drive and flee in escape pods launched in opposite directions.
At Sarek's suggestion, Llhran planned to maroon himself on a habitable planetoid just inside Romulan space for a time as a means of explaining his diminished physical condition, and Sarek determined the best coordinates for Amanda and himself to reach a nearby Vulcan research station.
As Llhran keyed up all the necessary controls he explained the features inside the escape pods. Sarek calculated they would only have forty-seven seconds to reach the pods from the internal battle bridge before the warp drive would begin a chain reaction and implode in on itself and crush the ship.
Sarek and Amanda would take the last pod from the aft starboard side, which would require them to cover a distance of approximately eighty meters. Under normal circumstances, either of them could probably do that easily, but Sarek's face was a curious shade of gray and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing as it was.
"I shall endure, Miss Grayson," he said unprompted when he noticed her looking at him.
Llhran announced that he was finished coding the pod's escape trajectories and that everything was ready. As soon as he pushed a button on the touch screen, all but two of the ship's pods would be jettisoned and the containment field of the warp drive would breach. Amanda breathed deeply and tried to mentally prepare herself to sprint. She didn't feel as bad as Sarek looked, but she certainly didn't feel ready for a footrace against what Sarek had described as "the rapid expansion and contraction of an artificial black hole."
She looked at Llhran and wondered why she was choosing to trust him. What if he jettisoned their pod too? What if…
It didn't matter. She didn't see that they had a choice but to trust him.
"You said we were not friends," she said, breaking the silence awkwardly and slightly startling him. "But I hope that does not mean we have to be enemies."
He nodded thoughtfully and said, "No, it does not. Travel safely, A'man-da."
She and Sarek moved toward the main entry door and waited for Llhran's signal to go. She felt a wild impulse to tell Sarek she loved him, to kiss him, and say all the things she'd been feeling for the past few weeks. She noticed him watching her with a sort of quiet patience and maybe something she would loosely describe as subtle wonder. She started to reach for his hand when Llhran cried, "GO!"
Time froze. The heavy black door glided open and they sprang forward into the dark hallway. Red lights were flashing along the floor and ceiling and she was dimly aware of a deafening siren over the blood rushing through her ears.
Straight. Left. Straight. Right. Left.
Then there they were. She and Sarek almost fell into the four-person escape pod in their rush and her hip screamed from where she'd slammed it into some kind of lever. She twisted and tried to seal the hatch that would automatically eject them from the ship's belly. It was stuck.
"Help me!" she screamed, looking back in Sarek's direction desperately as the ship's intercom system informed them of their impending fate in eleven, ten, nine, eight…
An odd, primal noise echoed from somewhere deep within her and escaped her lips, and she threw the force of her entire body onto the hatch release. She did it again and was successful.
The instant acceleration from the pod's ejection flung her across the whole of the small interior and she slammed into the opposite wall. Stars flashed in her vision and pain shot through her head, arm, and ribs. She reflexively curled into the fetal position and tried to catch her breath. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she turned onto her back and cradled her elbow, and through the portal at the top of the pod she could see nothing but the vast expanse of the universe.
She was numb from pain, relief, awe, and joy. She started to laugh hysterically and waited for Sarek to make some remark about her irrational display of emotion. She turned her head and saw he was face down and unconscious. Then the panic returned.
"Sarek?" she yelled.
No response. She tried to sit herself up and screamed. For the first time she noticed bones protruding from her right forearm and her left hand was slathered in blood. She was on the verge of fainting from the sight of it but managed to tenderly support herself on her left arm and shuffle over to him.
She tried to roll him onto his back and discovered he was impossibly heavy. It took most of the strength she had with one arm. As her adrenaline waned she began to notice just how heavy her head felt and how much all-encompassing pain she was in.
"Sarek?" she pleaded, shaking his shoulder.
She tried to check for a pulse but couldn't find one. Maybe it was just his physiology? His skin was freezing cold. Surely that couldn't be normal? She could detect a shallow rise and fall of his chest and felt exhilarating hope. He was breathing, at least.
She managed to stand and almost fell over. She steadied herself against one of the walls and looked around for anything that looked like a medical kit and discovered one overhead. She couldn't pull it down with one arm so she hit the release button with her left fist and allowed it to fall to the floor.
It was full of all kinds of scanners and devices that she couldn't even name, let alone use. Even if she could, what chance did an untrained human have of treating a Vulcan with Romulan medical supplies when she couldn't even identify what was wrong with him?
She started to cry in angry frustration. She noticed what looked like a fire blanket folded neatly under the seat directly behind him and she pulled it out and covered him as best she could and found even that simple task to be exhausting. She was so tired and light-headed and every part of her body hurt.
She curled up next to him under the blanket on her left side and rested her head on his upper chest. Tears dripped from the tip of her nose and her consciousness began to fade in and out.
"You don't get to die," she whispered. "I love you. Please, don't leave me."
She soon slipped into unconsciousness and they drifted away together into the black vastness of space.