Post 504: Something Somehow Sacred Part Two

Stardate:71017.1830
Title: Something Somehow Sacred, Part Two
Author: Lt. February Grace
Scene: Yensul V, above and below the surface
Time: Following Part One
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Maffe immediately responded to Salvek's question.

"There is another entrance to the tunnels," she admitted. "I didn't take you in that way before because I didn't want you to know how close your ship was to our caverns. Follow me."

No one on the Alchemy's crew could blame her for being cautious.

"We must split up," Salvek declared to his crew. "Someone has got to go back to the Alchemy and try to get a signal out to the Independence."

"You and I," Lair Kellyn replied. "Should go to the ship."

"Kellyn, both ranking officers should not go together," Dabin cautioned, though that was not his true motivation or worry, and she knew it.

He did not want both of Arie's parents in the same location, not with the Yensuli military hot on their heels.

"Agreed." Salvek concurred. "I see the wisdom in your words, Reece. Kellyn, I will go back to the ship. You stay here with the,"

"No." Kellyn cut him off.

"No?"

"No." She grabbed Xhian by the arm, and tugged. "Xhian and I will go. These people need your leadership, Salvek, along with Tybelle's." Her voice indicated that should the Alchemy be destroyed, and they were stuck on the planet, she believed his life to be more valuable to the survivors than hers would be.

He disagreed with this assessment wholeheartedly, but he knew that arguing with Lair Kellyn was an exercise in futility once she had made her mind up to do, or not let him do, something.

"As you wish," he paused. "My wife." He did something that shocked everyone present, he reached out and touched her face gently.

"Apart-." he whispered to her in Vulcan, though he suddenly found himself unable to finish the saying.

"But never parted." She finished for him. "If anything happens," she stopped short of telling him to take care of their daughter, because she knew that he would, if he could make it home. "C'mon, X, let's go."

Kellyn and Xhian departed the group and Salvek, Reece, Grace and Biggs all held a small child on their hip as Andara Maffe tried to explain to the women that they were not in danger from the males in the Alchemy's crew, but in fact, this crew was their hope for salvation.

The party moved quickly back into the tunnels. The Starfleet Officers were feeling their first taste of frostbite, having given as much of their clothing over to the new arrivals to the planet as they could stand to lose, without freezing to death between the surface and the tunnels.

Once they began to descend through the tunnels, Simon looked overhead with some concern and took out his tricorder. He showed the readings to Salvek, and grimly spoke.

"Sir, I have serious concerns about the structural integrity of these tunnels," Biggs warned. "There are large cracks, going up all the way through to the surface. I would bet that they happened when Alchemy slammed down." As if to punctuate his remark, snow, ice, and rocks began to rain down onto their heads through the largest of the leading cracks.

"Everyone must be as quiet as possible," Salvek informed the group, "I am afraid that the noise is not helping matters any. We do not want to encourage a cave in."

Maffe relayed the message over and over to the children in their care, who still cried inconsolably, and their mothers who were now nearly catatonic as they walked on in a complete state of shock.

One of the children slipped and fell, and let out a wail that was shrill and high pitched. The other children instantly began to cry out more loudly as well in sympathy, and the volume became too great. The weakening tunnels could not withstand the vibration it caused. In a split second, tons of snow and ice fell down, in, around, and onto the crew.

When it stopped, Salvek, Reece, and Maffe found themselves cut off from everyone, except two Yensuli women and the children they were currently carrying on their own backs.Salvek hurried to rise from the floor of the tunnel and began to scan all around them.

"February!" Dabin shouted, tearing his gloves to shreds as he clawed, literally, at the ice and snow that had formed an impassable barrier between them.

"It's no use, Reece. We have to go back, and then into the tunnels the long way." Salvek said, raising his voice to be heard over the panic rising around him. "There is more than ice and snow between us and the others, the walls of these tunnels are rich in monocrystal cortenum. It will be impossible to get through without a lot of help."

*Monocrystal cortenum,* Salvek thought to himself, *Which, when combined with polysilicate verterium, makes verterium cortenide; the material from which warp engine coils are constructed. That means that this planet is very, very valuable to the Federation, even if the fourth planet in the Yensul system is not. . .*

"I won't leave her!" Reece insisted, determined to discover the fate of his bride.
"I can't hear her. Why can't I hear her!" He feared the reason he couldn't hear her thoughts any longer was because they had ceased, along with her breathing, on the other side of the collapsed tunnel.

Tybelle Maffe reached out, and with a firm hand she prepared to slap Reece across the face to bring him to his senses. His hand caught hers in mid-air, his reflexes a lot faster than she expected in his current state of mind.

"You will not help her by staying here!" Maffe insisted.

Reece ignored her, and still holding her arm, turned back to Salvek "There has to be another way to get to them, has to be."

"Come, Dabin Reece. " Maffe spoke again before Salvek could reply. "We must go back the way we came, while we can still get out." She grabbed a handful of his sleeve with her second hand, and yanked him closer."Do not mislead yourself into thinking you are the only one who cares for someone trapped inside that tunnel."

Maffe led the way back out, and Reece, heart aching so badly he felt that he might not be able to draw his next breath, managed to forget entirely the physical pain of his existing injuries and ran, flat out, for the exit of the tunnels.
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Lt. February Grace
Helm/Flight Controller
USS Independence