Stiles paused at Zevon's sudden return to the conversation. "Like what?" "Pressure..." "I've got a headache, if that's what you're asking." "No! Are you standing?" "What?"

Suddenly his eyes began to sting fiercely, his head to throb horridly, as if he'd fallen into a vat of acid. Had he been shot? Phasered? Some kind of Potjan weapon? Cramps gripped his midsection and he grabbed the t.i.tanium bars of his cell, contracting against them until his knees couldn't fit between them anymore and he began to slip toward the floor. The floor was shaking! The walls were rumbling!

As he forced his eyes open, he saw the stone wall across from his cell now tattered and flaking before his astonished gaze.

Over a whine in his ears he shouted, "What's happening! What is this? An earthquake?"

"Lie on the floor! Quickly!" The other prisoner called over the increasing roar of collapsing stone and cracking mortar. "Lie face up! Put your arms flat at your sides! Breathe deeply !" "What is this? What is this! Why is this happening? "It's the Constrictor! Lie down!"

Stiles pushed off the bars and rushed to the hatch through which he'd been dumped in here. He pounded until his fist rang with numbness. "Hey! Let us out of here! The building's coming down on us! Let us out of here!" "Lie down, you fool," the other man said one more time.

"Ow-ah-ah-!" Grasping at his tinging head with both hands, Stiles staggered across the tiled floor, insane with new agony. As if iron bars were hanging from his limbs, brute force, like sheer invisible tonnage, pushed him to his knees. The floor came up to meet him and he collapsed forward, pressed physically to the cold tile as if crushed by a giant's palm.

With one last effort he dragged his tight arm under him and managed to turn halfway over, then partially onto his back. After that he gave in to the rule of sheer might. He gasped as his flesh flattened against the files with such duress that he could feel the edges of the tile and the shape of the gout lines creasing his body. He stared, consumed with fear, at his own arms stretching out before him.

As his face lay against a tile, he saw a crack develop in the floor, small at first and then larger, running through the bars and out into the corridor, then up the wall. The building-Trapped on his side, Stiles tried to raise his head, to follow the crack with his eyes, but his skull alone weighed a hundred pounds. His arms, sprawled out before him, actually began to bow into the shape of the floor over the indentation of a drain he hadn't even noticed until now. Insane with shock, he witnessed the surreal horror of his right arm breaking, his unsupported limb molding itself to the squared-off shape of the drain. His lips peeled back with sheer agony.

There, where his tight arm lay shattered and compressed into the shape of the drain, a fissure opened in the floor, swallowing the drain's metal grate, dismembering the tiles, uncoupling the t.i.tanium bars as shriveling compression took over trod the planet opened up.

Stiles felt himself fall, deadweight, strong-armed through a cracking floor, and saw in his last glance the mangled building unravel itself and cleave down upon him.

Beneath the grind and roar of utter demolition, he listened as if disconnected to the echo of his own cries.

Chapter Five.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" "You don't have to yell, Eric." "We're doing whatever you say." "Stiles?"

"The Federation will negotiate for your freedom. I'll see to it personally." "Wasn't so hard." "This is hardly routine for you. You needn't cheat yourself" "Eric Stiles! Can you hear me?" "Relax."

Voices pumped through a haze of agony. Had to answer them. How else would they find him?

Cold stuffy air lay against tons of crushed stone and the sharktoothed edges of cracked and disrupted floor tile that now formed more of a wall, bracing one side of a deep fissure.

Faint light swam above, dusty shafts of light, offering no comfort but instead flaming the ugliness of what lay above and around. Water dripped somewhere nearby. Hear it, smell it. Feel it-his left thigh was soaked. At least I've still got a leg.

Eric Stiles tried to raise the leg he'd just rediscovered. The knee came up a few inches, which forced him to balance by raising his head and shoulders-agony seating through his right arm, shoulders, and right side. He threw his head back and gritted his teeth. The effort drove him all the way to consciousness, suddenly, like hitting a rock, and his eyes shot open. The light he had seen as a blur now focused far overhead. It must be... forty feet up. Had that been the ceil, up there? Was that the same light in the corridor outside his bars? "I hear you. I'm trying to reach you." Who was that?

Until he heard the other voice, this one clear and not far away, Stiles hadn't been aware that he was moaning, wincing out the sheeting pain in his right arm. Broken. He remembered now. It had been sucked into the shape of the tile drain, broken in at least two places.

Were the bones popping through the skin? Would he bleed to death from a broken arm? "Eric Stiles, speak if you can."

No, leave me alone. I'm almost dead. Let me finish. Complete one thing. Follow through on this one thing.

Slowly, more slowly than the trickling of thought or water, his body adjusted to the constant pain. As he stopped straggling, stopped trying to lift himself, gradually his arm settled from searing mind-numbing agony to an acceptable throb with his fingers numb. The numbness itself hurt, but after a time he was able to concentrate on the hazy light far overhead and play mental games with it. He endured its mockery, accused it of fickleness, fielded its insults, and claimed it was impotent. Surging in and out of awareness, he conducted a conversation with the faint light and imagined that it was singing to him.

At that point, the fleeting thought that he might be delirious finally settled home and he cleared his throat just to hear his own voice. Just as he began to drowse again, something crashed-the sound of brick and tile falling. Stiles flinched bodily and raised his head. "Who's there?" "Zevon." "Where are you?" "Making my way to you. Can you come toward me?"

"My leg" Stiles gasped roughly, "it's pinned under something."

Only now did he comprehend that his leg was caught, only when he actually heard the words, even though he'd spoken them himself. Was the leg cut off?. Just an imagined sensation? He could feel his toes. Was that important?

"Did the building collapse?" he asked. His words echoed slightly, enough to offer a sensation of cave dwelling.

Zevon's response filtered uneasily from far away. "A sinkhole has opened beneath the jail building. We fell into it. It may have saved our lives by relieving the stress at the critical moment." "What stress?" "The Constrictor. A particularly harsh one this time"

Stiles paused and concentrated on breathing. He'd heard that Constrictor word before. Where?

Resting his left hand on his chest, he felt himself breathe. In, out, in, and a sigh. "This is... this is really... what's the word-ironic?" "What is?" Zevon sounded closed-in, m.u.f.fled. "I pulled rank to get this mission" "How did you?"

"The ensign who was up for duty that night, he was on my watch rotation. When I heard about somebody getting a chance to evac Amba.s.sador Spock... what an opportunity! I rotated the other guy to an escort mission off the starbase. When the name for duty officer came up, it was mine."

Glancing around his jagged stone prison, Stiles noted with clearing eyes the truly freakish surroundings which would now only in the most generous of mists have resembled a building. Twisted pipes and structural supports lay in tatters around him, the walls of former street-level chambers now fractured in dozens of places, so that plasterwork, concrete sections, brackets, lathe, joists, and support rods showed their gory broken edges. His jail cell had been on the street level. Now he was forty feet below the street, in what could be described as a wide well-shaft walled in on all sides by the remains of the floors above. "Still in the cell" he muttered.

Stone and metal collided somewhere in the dimness, behind a huge slab of concrete that must be the remains of the wall between his cell and Zevon's. How much of the broken building had wedged itself between them?

"Is there anybody else in here?" Stiles raised his head. "Wish I could move... rm so... cold..." "Can you see your bunk?"

Bunk? Oh-Stiles blinked and forced himself to figure out his surroundings. There was the toilet, standing on its head with a piece of support rod piercing the bowl. What if he had landed over there? What would that rod have done to his body?

"Has your bunk fallen somewhere near you?" Zevon asked again, more forcefully despite the m.u.f.fling of the wall material between them. Stiles turned his head to the left. "It's right next to me."

"Pull the blanket or the mattress on top of you. Cover yourself with it." "Why?" "Because you're going into shock:'

"Oh, I'm just... it's just that my leg's stuck and... I can't...." "You're getting cold. The temperature down here is still-" "Look, I don't even know you! You could be some kind of a murderer or a criminal. Why should I listen to you? You're coming over here to kill me, aren't you?" "Pull the blanket over you. Cover your body."

"You just don't want me to see what you're going to do to me:'

"Cover yourself, Stiles. Do it immediately. This is an order!"

His right arm shivered violently, transferring the shivering to his chest, his neck, and he suddenly tensed. The collapsed cell around him echoed with a grievous moan. He couldn't disobey orders. Starfleet officers had an obligation. Set a good example. He was older than all the others.

His left hand cramped briefly, shifted-he forced it upward. The bunk lay on his left, tipped up on one of its points and leaning against whatever was behind it. Supported by something he couldn't see... supported, as he had been by Travis, Beret, Andrea, the Bolt brothers, the whole team. The Evac Team. "Come on, Eric, lift your hand. You can do it."

Travis Perraton stood up behind that bunk, holding the metal rim, edging the bunk toward his hand until Stiles's fingers touched the blanket. "Pull it down." Jeremy was there too.

The woolly fabric was cool, but warmed almost immediately as he clutched it. Looking down at him, Travis and Jeremy detached tile blanket from where it was tucked under the thin mattress, and the blanket fell onto his arm and shoulder with just a tug. "Thanks" he murmured. "I knew you'd get here."

Travis nodded and looked at Andrea Hipp and Beret Folmer. They reached down through the rubble and pulled the blanket over Stiles's chest.

Jeremy White's hand floated forward and tucked the blanket around Stiles's right ribs. "There you go, chief."

"What took you guys so long?" Stiles grumbled, smiling. "My right arm's broken... you guys really butchered this building. What'd you have to hit it so hard for? You could've just blown one wall. I could've walked right out. I guess you didn't want to take any chances. What a team... you're so great to me... I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"You always yell," Travis told him. "We quit listening a long time ago." "Long ago" Andrea Hipp agreed with a grin.

'Tm glad to see you," Stiles told them. "There's some guy in the next cell... I think he's going to kill me." "why should he?" Andrea asked.

Bernt Folmer shook his head. "You're just nervous. Don't worry about him." "But he's a criminal or something," Stiles protested. "How do you know?" "He's in jail, isn't he?"

Travis smiled and jiggled Stiles's knee. "So are you, light~ foot."

Heartened by the presence of his team, Stiles raised his head again and surveyed the sheered-off slab of wall that pinned his right leg. "Why don't you lift this off me? I think I can stand up if you do. My toes are moving."

Uneasily Jeremy White glanced at Berut. "Well... we can't."

"Why not?" Stiles blinked at him, then looked at Andrea and Bernt, then finally at Travis, from whom he would get the straight answer. "What's wrong?"

Travis Perraton leaned against a jagged rock piecing a crack in the wall. "We didn't make it"

"We tried to get you" Andrea added. "But they got us instead."

"what?" Shoving up on his one good elbow, Stiles almost immediately collapsed in a surge of shock and misery. "Aw, Travis... how'd you and Jeremy get out of the coach? Why'd you leave? Berut, the fighters were guarding the coach! You were the Wing Leader... you had your orders...." "We didn't want to leave you," Bernt said. "You're such a bag of emotions, Eric," Travis commented.

Jeremy splayed his hands in a shrug. "So we're ghosts. Could be worse. Eric, you're going into shock."

"Stay awake, Eric." Travis knelt beside him. "Eric, stay with me, lightfoot. Don't go to sleep. Are you listening? Open your eyes ." "Cover up" Andrea reminded.

"Okay, I've got my own orders, I get it:' Pulling the blanket over his chest again, Stiles felt a series of moans run through his body. The sound was detached, as if made by a wheezing wind or a sighing pipe deep in the plumbing.

"Stay awake, Eric," Bernt warmly repeated. "That's an order."

"Aye aye," Stiles murmured. "I feel better now. I'm warming up. Thanks for looking after me."

Travis offered his continental maitred' smile. "Sure, lightfoot." "We've got to go," Bernt said. Stiles forced his eyes open again. "So soon?" Andrea shrugged. "It's just that they hate aliens." "See ya;' Jeremy threw in. Stiles sighed. "See ya. Hey, what about my arm?" "I can set your arm, ensign." Another voice. Soothing and stable.

He turned his head to his right, and there in the haze of feeble light saw the one person who could sustain him in any crisis.

"Amba.s.sador... you came" he rasped, as if thanking the famous man for dropping in at a party. "And I'm just gum on your shoe...."

Spock tilted his elegant head accommodatingly and with his long hands caressed Stiles's demolished arm. "You're under great strain, ensign. I shall set your aim before I go. I have a splint here, but the arm will have to be lifted briefly. Relax."

The words were clear and inspired confidence. Stiles closed his eyes, understanding that there would be terrific pain and he would do better if he relaxed as ordered. Spock pressed a rea.s.suring hand to Stiles's chest, as comfortingly as Travis or Jeremy might have done, then cradled Stiles's shattered limb. His expression became studious and determined.

Stiles closed his eyes tighter, turned his face away, and braced for punishment. When it came, the gripping anguish took him completely by surprise despite his preparation. To a young man in the prime of youth who had never had a broken bone, pain's sheer overdrive utterly disemboweled him. His head cranked back into the stone, his teeth gritted, and he was dimly aware of his body as it wrung and twisted. With every shred of self-control he possessed, he forced his right shoulder to relax and his arm to disengage from the cruelty as he felt his own bones grating.

A disembodied voice phasered gasps into the cool cellar, but he barely registered the sound as his own. Why was it taking so long? Did it take hour to set a bone? Why didn't Spock just cut the arm off?. Stiles dealt with the loathsome pain and the sudden heaving of his stomach at this, his first taste of dynamic physical torment.

"Another moment.." Spock's voice was his lifeline, but for the first time he didn't believe the hollow rea.s.surance. "Almost finished, ensign."

"why do you have to hurt me?" Stiles moaned. "You're the only one I ever respected...."

"One more wrap... relax now. Let me secure this. Your arm will adjust in a few minutes. Relax, Ensign... relax."

A gentle hand pressed to the hollow of his shoulder, poised there, and beneath the steadiness and rea.s.surance of that contact Stiles let his neck and shoulders go limp, and finally convinced his legs to lie quiet. Then the nausea set in. His brow furrowed and his lips clamped against the surging in his stomach and throat. Moans shuddered through his body. He heard them, felt them, but could no more control them than harness the shattered building that now cradled him so far below the street.

His own groans wakened him from the drowse brought on by pain. The first concrete thing he noticed was that the searing jab of broken bones in his arm had drained to a manageable ache. Or perhaps it hurt more than he thought it did, but he was conditioned now to the racking and this was better than that. Desolation of spirit sank in on him, and he opened his eyes and looked to his right.

A narrow form stood over him, plucking at the wrappings on his arm. The slick dark hair seemed so familiar... the features somewhat less angular than he remembered, but close enough... soft light from overhead dipping into the curves of those famous pointed ears, which had come to represent such style and trust to anyone in the Federation ....

Stiles blinked his eyes clear and moved his right leg. The knee came up where he could see it. Torn pants. His right leg? Wasn't it pinned under a rock? "Did you move that by yourself?."

"With a lever," the other man said. The voice was different. "A piece of rod from the broken wall." He held up a three-foot remnant of wall rod, then set it down again. "It broke, but it did serve to move the slab from your leg. You're free now. Don't move, however. You're injured."

'TII be fine;' Stiles protested. "Takes more than an earthquake to get a Starfleeter down."

"Of course. Try not to move. I've splinted your arm with two bent pieces of linoleum and strips of my blanket. I hope it holds. Does it seem to pinch at all?"

"Where's everybody else?" Stiles asked, ignoring the other question. "Where'd they go?" "Who?"

"The Evac Team. They were here... sit me up, will you, sir?" Stiles drew a full breath, the first one in a long time that wasn't cramped and tight. Oxygen surged into his body, clearing his head. "You need not call me 'sir.'" "But I can't just..." "You may call me Zevon. I don't care for the other."

Stiles gazed briefly at the long fingers holding him gently in place. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dimness and no longer blurred by pain, he surveyed that hand, the long dark red sleeve, the velvety padded jacket of gunmetal gray and with a turtleneck collar of the same dark red, and above that a stranger's face with somehow familiar features. The upswept eyebrows, dark eyes, becalmed face but a young face. And the hair was not cut in the typically Vulcan slick helmet, but instead a rather roughly cut s.h.a.g of cordovan brown, longer than Spock's, less orderly, tucked behind the lovely sh.e.l.lshaped ears, the left of which had a small but noticeable scar, a slight nip out of the side edge. So he'd been through something, some time in the past.

Young, though. Not a hundred-plus-year-old amba.s.sador with a stunning history spanning back to the first openings of deep s.p.a.ce-someone else. Stiles straggled briefly with trying to figure Zevon's age, but in his condition he couldn't compute human years against anybody else's. "Did I lose consciousness?" Stiles asked.

"Briefly" Zevon admitted. "I have no anesthetic to give you, nor any pain medication. Sad thing, for a scientist to be unprepared;'

His expression was efficient, as one might expect, yet somehow unashamedly sympathetic. Odd...

"I guess we've been down here alone the whole time." Stiles glanced past Zevon, just to make sure he wasn't seeing Travis or Jeremy anymore. Or even the amba.s.sador he so deeply revered. Somehow they'd gotten him through the worst, and refused.

"In fact;' Zevon confirmed, "I believe we were alone in the jail building when the Constrictor came." "Constrictor... so what are you doing here, anyway?" "I am a political prisoner. I was hunted and kidnapped." "You personally? They wanted you?" "No. Anyone of my race."

"Why? I mean, I'm just here because my ship crashed. That's how they got me. n.o.body hunted me down. Why would they hunt you down? Is it just because they hate aliens?"

"Some, but I command a particular kind of ship. They thought my presence here would give them leverage:'

"You command a ship? You said you were a scientist, not a captain !"

"Primarily I am a scientist. The command is a position of royal favor"

With a small shake of his head, Stiles frowned. "I never heard of anything like that in the Vulcan fleet."

"Not Vulcan." Zevon pa.s.sively adjusted the position of Stiles's fight arm. "Romulan."

Stiles drew one breath, sharply, and heaved himself to a partially sitting position, up on his right hip. The blanket slipped from his body and felt to one side. He reached over his own form, fished for the piece of rod he knew was here. His fingers struck the rod, knocked it a few inches, and he found it again. In a single swipe he raised the rod, knocked the Romulan along the side of his face, drove him away, and pointed the sharp end of the rod.

"You get away from me!" he shouted. "Stay away from me!"