IMBALANCE

by V. E. Mitchell

  “Why?” O’Brien demanded angrily, pounding his fist against the engineering console. “Why does the captain insist that I rescue the damned bugs who kidnapped my wife? We ought to just blast the lot of them to oblivion!”

  “Calm down, Chief, and keep your mind on busi ness! The captain wants those Jarada for questioning.” Geordi’s voice contained a steely edge. While he understood O’Brien’s anger, it was getting in the way of the transporter chief’s work. However, Geordi had to admit that despite his bluster, O’Brien had performed brilliantly getting the Jarada pilots out of their craft.

  Geordi skimmed through the results of Data’s latest simulation, which postulated one way that the Jarada might be jamming the Enterprise’s sensors, and then dumped the numbers to O’Brien’s console. “We need a plan for holding the transporter lock against this kind of interference.”

  “This is all hypothetical,” O’Brien snarled. “Why don’t we just take a landing party down there and rescue them? Before the Jarada kill them?”

  Geordi heaved an exasperated sigh. “If you have any suggestions on how to find them, I’m sure the captain will be eager to hear them. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is make sure we can keep a transporter lock on them when we find them, regardless of what the Jarada throw at us. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” O’Brien replied in a tone that contradicted his agreement. However, his hands moved across his panel, calling for information and cuing in the tests he needed to decide the best way to transport people through the Jaradan interference.

  “Good.” Geordi sent another set of reports to O’Brien’s console. “Let’s get cracking, so we’ve got the answers when they’re needed.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  RIKER SLAMMED INTO the bottom of the shaft, and the wind whooshed from his body. Dazed and battered, he slumped to the wet floor, gasping for breath. Every bone, every muscle, every nerve in his body screamed from the beating he had taken as he plummeted down the ramp. He had lost track of the number of times he bad banged his shoulder or his knee as he descended, struggling to keep some control of his course but not daring to stop himself for fear that the guardians would pour down the ramp before he reached the bottom.

  He tried to move, testing his body to see how badly he was injured. By now he knew his bruises had bruises, each puffy swelling embellished with its own satellite injuries. His left knee was swelling rapidly and soon, he feared, he would not be able to bend it. Moving slowly, he rolled on his side and started to get up.

  A loud scraping hum, accented by random clatterings and knockings, poured down the shaft. Before Riker could wonder who or what was descending so rapidly, Zarn shot around the comer. The Jarada was on his back, using his exoskeleton like a toboggan. He crashed into Riker, again knocking the human to the floor.

  The impact flipped Zarn over and he scrambled to his feet. “That was most exhilarating. I see why you find so much enjoyment in descending in that manner.” The insectoid moved to the outer wall and raked his claws over the mold-covered wall, activating the control panel.

  Riker groaned and tried to stand. Somehow it was harder the second time. To make matters worse, when Zarn had hit him, the Jarada’s claws had nicked him in several places and the cuts were smarting from the contact with his wet uniform. He shuddered at the thought of what could happen if he didn’t get proper treatment soon.

  “Hurry!” Zarn ordered, his voice hitting three shrill, discordant notes. “I overrode the standard setting on the door where we entered, but that won’t keep them away for long. They’ll be after us as soon as a squad reaches the door on the next level.”

  “Oh, great! That’s all I needed to hear.” Riker forced himself to his feet and cautiously put his weight onto his left leg. The knee was very tender and too swollen for him to bend it more than a few degrees, but it held his weight. Heaving a sigh of relief that the injury was not worse, he hobbled over to the door. “If we’re in such a hurry, what are we waiting for?”

  Zarn pounded on the control panel, which flashed a message at him in lavender characters. “Security breach? Vrel’keth brefteev! I’ll give you ‘security breach’!” His claws twitching against the control pads, he entered a long string of commands. A message in royal purple answered him, and Zarn tapped in anoth er long sequence of coded symbols. Finally the door began to open.

  Zarn dashed through, beckoning for Riker to follow. “Hurry up! Someone is trying to lock us in the shaft. I overrode their program with my Council authority, but that won’t last for long. When it occurs to them, they’ll block all the overrides for this part of the complex.”

  Limping heavily, Riker stumbled through the door. He had barely cleared the frame when it began closing. He paused, listening for sounds of pursuit, but the shaft behind them was silent. “They’re not on our trail yet. If you have any good ideas for throwing them off, this would be an excellent time for them.”

  Zarn started down the tunnel, moving ahead of Riker before he realized the human was not keeping up. The Jarada slowed, swiveling his head around to see what the problem was. His four-legged stride covered the ground with an easy lope that Riker envied, but at the moment he would have gladly settled for two sound limbs. “You must hurry if you don’t want them to catch up with us,” Zarn said.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Riker grumbled, more than a little annoyed at his own weakness. The worst of it was that he didn’t know how much he dared admit to Zarn about his injuries. He thought the Jarada was on his side, but he was beginning to wonder. His inability to contact the Enterprise and the repeated attacks were making him less and less inclined to trust Zarn. If he could have gotten himself out of this interminable dungeon on his own, he would have declined any further help from his host.

  The Jarada watched him, studying Riker’s limp for so long that he began to feel self-conscious. Finally Zarn pivoted his head forward and slowed his pace. “Truly, if your people are so fragile, how do you manage to survive? And why do you indulge in such activities as the sliding if you are not capable of absorbing the damage?”

  “It wasn’t by choice,” Riker muttered, envisioning Zarn with a bruised joint. The swelling against the Jarada’s exoskeleton would indubitably be even more painful than the pressure in Riker’s knee.

  “I don’t understand your answer.”

  Without waiting for Riker to explain, Zarn dashed into a side corridor. The floor was coated with mud, and a trickle of water meandered along one wall. Several passageways split from the tunnel, each looking more dark and unhealthy than the last. Zarn chose one, apparently at random, then selected another tunnel that branched from it. With each turning the floor became muddier and the number of surviving glowstrips fewer. Where are we going? Riker wondered, but decided it wasn’t something he wanted the Jarada to tell him. His instincts warned him that the answer would be unpleasant at best and, at the worst, he would find the story completely unbelievable.

  After three or four turns Zarn entered a tunnel whose end was blocked by a huge pile of mud and dirt. His antennae sprung outward, giving his face a decidedly smug expression. For a moment Riker had to fight against an irrational impulse to wipe the look off Zarn’s face. When the Jarada spoke, Riker was almost sorry he had resisted. “We will climb through there,” Zarn said, pointing at the mound of dirt. “There is a short stretch of tunnel between two cave-ins. No one will look for us there.”

  Riker eyed the blocked tunnel dubiously. He was not sure he could fit through a Jarada-size opening, and he was certain he didn’t want to try. However, he didn’t think he could retrace their path and find a way out of these deserted tunnels, so he had to stick with Zarn. Reluctantly, he followed the insectoid up the pile of dirt, discovering that there was a large gap at the top where the ceiling of the tunnel once had been. He squeezed through and slithered down the other side.

  “We will wait here,” Zarn announced. “They will search these tunnels for five standards if they use the customary procedu
res. After that we will be free to go.”

  Riker heaved a sigh of frustration. The last thing he wanted to do was sit around in cold, wet mud for several hours. However, he had little choice. He lowered his head to his knees and, in spite of himself, was soon fast asleep.

  He awoke slowly, unable to place where he was. It was cold, so cold and wet he thought at first he was still dreaming. Mud was everywhere, supporting him, surrounding him, and oozing into every pore of his uniform. Surely, he thought, so miserable a place could not exist outside a nightmare.

  The sluggish plop of water into a puddle, as monotonous and maddening as the proverbial Chinese water torture, finally convinced Riker he was awake. Carefully, he pried one eyelid open to confirm his worst fears. He was alone in the blocked-off section of passageway, with no sign of where Zarn had gone or if he intended to return.

  Riker shoved against the ground, trying to push himself upright. He got nowhere, his muscles too stiff and battered to respond. With a groan he flopped on his back, and the cold mud found new places to penetrate. As it seeped into his hair, Riker decided that whoever said hell was hot had never been there; eternity in a frigid mud hole like this seemed an infinitely worse punishment. Suddenly, his stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in many hours. He gritted his teeth, knowing there was no food available, and willed himself to ignore the hunger pangs. His first priority was to get himself out of here.

  Concentrating on his hands first, he began moving his fingers. Slowly, carefully, he worked the stiffness from his wrists and arms, flexing and warming each muscle until he regained use of it. Moving to his toes, he repeated the exercises for his legs, gently stretching and bending them until he could stand. He was pleased to find that the cold had taken down some of the swelling in his left knee. The joint was still painfully enlarged, but the fabric of his uniform no longer stretched taut across the injury.

  He levered himself to his feet, his movements slow and awkward as he tried to keep his balance on the greasy mud. The middle of the tunnel seemed firmer, the floor less muddy. Riker squelched the five steps over to the driest area, thinking how mud had lost its attractiveness after he reached the age of ten. Before that he remembered the fights he had had every summer with his cousins in Oklahoma, when his aunt had sent them off to play in the creek that ran through the back forty. The four of them, with Riker the youngest by two years, had always returned covered from head to toe with the clayey red muck with which they had pelted each other.

  With a shake Riker brought himself back to the present. The mud was much more like the gummy sediment along the rivers of his native Alaska, icy rock powder as cold as the glacial waters that poured off the serrated white mountains. Testing the footing to be sure he had guessed right, Riker started a series of stretches and lunges. At first he worked slowly, just to get his blood circulating, but gradually he picked up the pace until he felt able to take on almost anything. Beads of sweat dotted his hairline and, for the first time in hours, he felt deliciously warm.

  As he paused for breath, he heard a rock bounce down the far side of the mound of dirt where he and Zarn had entered. Was it Zarn returning, or had a hostile Jarada discovered his hiding place? Quickly, Riker clambered up the slope and crouched in the darkness beside the entrance. A strong scent of pine preceded the Jarada through the opening. The deep brown chitin-armored legs that appeared in the opening were the right color to be Zarn, but Riker was taking no chances. His arm swept forward, chopping against the Jarada’s strong-legs. The blow upset the insectoid’s balance and he fell, skidding to the bottom of the slope. He ended on his back, and with all eight limbs waving in the air, revolving slowly on the small patch of semidry floor.

  Riker straightened slowly and took his time to descend, watching the Jarada. His face twitched as he fought to control the amused grin that tugged at his mouth. Zarn did look rather silly in that position and, after the pain and misery and uncertainty of the last few hours, it felt good to see the Jarada at a disadvantage. Riker knew it was a petty thought, but he acknowledged the source—after everything that had happened, he was no longer sure if he could trust Zarn. To see the tables turned on the Jarada reassured him that he was not entirely helpless, no matter how much he needed the insectoid to lead him out of this maze.

  “Why did you do that?” Zarn’s voice sounded flat, the triple notes of his speech oddly compressed. “Fighting is only for those of the warrior castes, and you could have been seriously injured if you tried that maneuver on one of them.”

  Riker stared down at the Jarada, trying to decide if his statement was the truth. If it was hard to read Zarn under normal circumstances, deciphering his expression was almost impossible while the Jarada drifted in a leisurely circle with his limbs flailing in the air. Flipping a mental coin, Riker decided Zarn had not exactly lied to him, but that he had, in all probability, omitted enough of the truth to make the remainder of questionable usefulness. However, the insectoid was still his best chance for escaping from this slimy mud hole, so he needed to keep their relationship on as cordial a footing as possible. “I didn’t know who was coming,” he said finally. “Since you didn’t tell me where you were going or when you would be back, I thought it might be an enemy. And I was afraid if I waited too long, I wouldn’t have a second chance to protect myself.”

  “I told you they’d quit searching after five standards. No one else knows you’re here,” Zarn said in a disgusted tone. “Now, quit dithering around and help me up off this floor.”

  Riker extended his foot, shoving it against Zarn’s side to stop his spin. For his size, the Jarada was heavy, and Riker grunted with the effort. All the insectoid’s mass was in his torso, a fact that might be helpful if Riker ever met a Jarada in hand-to-hand combat. Leaning over, Riker braced himself and offered Zarn his hand.

  The Jarada locked his claws around Riker’s wrist and pulled himself over on his side. From that position he completed his flip and scrambled to his feet. He started up the mound toward the exit, gesturing to Riker to follow him. “Come. Hurry. We must leave here before someone discovers the transportation I found for us.”

  “What? Transportation to where?” Escaping from the tunnels sounded like a good idea, but Riker wasn’t sure how far he wanted to commit himself until he knew what Zarn had in mind. By now he was long overdue to check in, and the Enterprise was surely searching for him. He didn’t want to get too far away from where they would be looking, especially since his communicator seemed to be malfunctioning. Although he wasn’t sure exactly where he was, he knew he was still within walking distance of the Governance Complex. If the search was being run according to standard procedure, the scans would have started from his last confirmed position and moved outward in concentric circles. Unless the ship was having other difficulties, they should find him, literally, any minute.

  “I will take you to a safe place where there are no crazy ones. It isn’t too far from here, but if they see you before we get there, the insane ones will try to attack you as they did before.” Zarn paused at the top of the mound, swiveling his head to look back at Riker. “Now, will you hurry before someone else requisitions our transportation?”

  Riker started to climb, thinking that Zarn seemed a little too eager. Still, he had seen more than enough of these muddy, moldy tunnels to last him a lifetime. Perhaps when they got closer to the surface, it would be easier for the Enterprise to locate him. Normally, the ship’s scanners should have found him long before this. The radiation levels in the Beltaxiyan system weren’t high enough to disrupt the sensors, although some compensation would be necessary to process the data. Since he hadn’t yet been found, something in the tunnels must be interfering as well.

  They met no one, although Riker saw streaks and scrapes in the dirt and scum on the floor that told him other Jarada had passed that way recently. In a few places the scent of cinnamon or cloves still lingered, striking an almost pleasant contrast to the dominant odors of mud and mold.

&
nbsp; After ten minutes they began moving upward a level at a time. In most places they found open ramps that led in the direction Zarn had chosen, but twice they were forced to use the enclosed spiraling ramps. Each time Zarn muttered about the dangers of coding the entry sequence into the locks, but nothing happened either time. Riker wondered if the Jarada expected the computer that controlled the locks to identify them, or if the complaints were to keep him on edge. Given how long it took Zarn to work the locks, Riker didn’t need more reasons to be nervous. It was far too easy to imagine someone accidentally stumbling across them in the restricted confines of the shaft.

  Finally they reached the surface, ducking out of the building through a narrow door located near the end of a long corridor. It was dark outside, and a dense row of bushes screened them from view. Zarn scuttled along the building, crouching to avoid the branches that arched against the wall. Riker had to bend almost double to keep from being slapped in the face by leaves and thorny twigs.

  They turned the corner and crept halfway down the next wall before Zarn found a gap in the bushes. Spreading the branches apart, he gestured for Riker to go through. He stepped out onto a walkway beside a major thoroughfare, lit only by the reddish glow from the gas giant overhead. Fortunately for them, the street was deserted except for a small teardrop-shaped groundcar parked in front of them.

  “Hurry!” Zarn whispered, stepping clear of the bushes. He trotted over to the car and tapped its window. The door slid open and the Jarada climbed inside. “Hurry!” he repeated, his voice strident with anxiety.

  Riker started forward, still debating whether to get in the car. His instincts told him that he probably wouldn’t find a better chance to strike out on his own, but he wasn’t sure how far he could get. The empty street offered few possibilities for cover and fewer distractions to keep Zarn from finding him. All he had to do, he told himself, was stay in the clear until the Enterprise’s scanners located him. He ran the calculations again and still disliked his chances. Showing Zarn he distrusted him didn’t seem like a good bet.