Chapter Text
Two levels above the assault team, a detonator ticked down to zero and the finger-sized bomb planted in an environmental control closet exploded. Energy ripped through the surrounding conduits, tripping at least a dozen different alarms. One of those, and probably more than one, triggered an alert klaxon, a harsh, high-pitched whine that would give Chekov a headache if he had to listen to it for too long.
He heard the grin in the marine’s voice behind him. Corporal Bhatti, the explosives expert of the squad, didn’t try to keep the pride out of her voice. “Your distraction, Lieutenant.”
Running through the basic plan again in his head, Chekov allowed himself a moment of thinking out loud. “Thank you, Corporal. Now, if the floor plans we downloaded from the base system are correct, the detention cells are one level beneath us and approximately fifty metres in that direction.” He pointed through a wall on an angle. “Grant, you and Bhatti remain on this level. I’d like several more distractions to lead any hostiles away from us.”
The pale woman nodded, a wisp of ginger hair sneaking out from under her helmet. “Understood, sir.”
With a nod, he turned to the final member of his team, a stout, grouchy Tellarite who seemed to be taking great joy in the destruction they were about to sow in the underground base. “Grev, you are with me. We rendezvous at the maintenance crawl way marked Beta Three.” He didn’t fish out his tricorder to verify the location, but Grev made an extra-sour face, no mean feat from a human perspective, the dark eyes scrunching into ovals and upper lip wrinkling further under the thick nostrils. To Chekov, Tellarites always looked sour, much as he tried to learn to read their expressions, but Grev kicked it up a notch.
“Hunh. And if the floorplan’s wrong?” Grev didn’t make eye contact with Chekov, instead scanning the corridor behind him, probably looking for any hint of movement. It was nice to know the noncom had his back even in disagreement.
He grinned at the stocky Warrant Officer anyway. “Then I will require your superior combat abilities to secure a living prisoner to lead us to the Vulcan ambassador.”
“Ah, we improvise.” The face didn’t smooth. It couldn’t. But the sudden grin spread the wrinkles in horrifying directions. “I like it.”
While Chekov would have preferred to have several backup plans going into the rescue, half the running of a small unit action was in maintaining the flexibility to react properly to conditions as you found them.
“How long do we wait, sir?”
Chekov did spend a moment to consider Grant’s question. “If we have not joined or contacted you with alternate instructions in, let us say, ten minutes, you will attempt to reach the ambassador along an alternate route and return to the surface.”
“And what about you and Grev, sir?” Bhatti frowned, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving without them.
With a head shake, Chekov flashed a brief smile to take any possible sting from the words. “The ambassador’s security is paramount. You have your orders, Corporal.”
“Yes, sir.” She hesitated just long enough for her eyes to narrow. “I just don’t like leaving people behind.”
The Tellarite barked a single syllable of laughter. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll do our best to make sure you don’t have to.” He patted his phaser rifle even as he didn’t draw attention to the half dozen grenades glued to his belt. Grant lifted his own rifle. “And we’ll improvise a whole lot of damage and casualties.”
With a nod, Chekov pointed ahead. “We’re that way. Move out.” Letting the NCO set the pace, he followed quickly down the corridor as they took two turns and avoided a pair of running guards by the simple expedient of pressing themselves against the wall to stay out of peripheral vision.
One more turn and Grev nodded ahead of them, whispering. “Maintenance access is behind that door.” Reaching it, he immediately spun the mechanical latch. It moved smoothly, letting a couple of metal clanks reach their ears before it swung inwards.
It was difficult not to sigh. “I appreciate the daring, Warrant Officer, but is it not possible you set off an alarm just by opening it?” He would at least have liked to scan it first.
A Tellarite grin was a fearsome thing to behold. Grev waved at the side of the door. “No entrance code required, and your base schematics say there are no defense systems inside.”
Chekov took note of the possessive pronoun just as an explosion echoed through the corridors. A stun grenade from the sound of it. “Ah, so now you trust the floorplan?”
With a shrug, Grev stepped forward to the hatch. “No, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll go first.”
“Somehow I think you’d go first anyway.”
“My job, sir. Gotta protect your commissioned, in charge of the mission, carcass, after all.” Grev stepped through the hatch and motioned for Chekov to hurry up to the sound of distant phaser fire. The Tellarite dogged the hatch behind them.
“I appreciate your concern.”
Grev practically jumped down the ladder to the next level and undogged the hatch he found there. His head disappeared from Chekov’s view for a moment, but pulled back almost instantly. “It’s clear. You can come down.”
Not quite as reckless as his partner, Chekov moved quickly down the ladder, a part of his mind actually grateful for the sturdy construction and the padding on each step giving minimal sound and shaking as he stomped on each step. With the hatch open below him, his boots ringing on metal rungs would have been something more than he wanted.
Together, the two of them slipped out of the hatch, which Grev closed, but did not dog, behind them, and they began to creep forward just as a human guard in commercial armour stepped around the corner. All three of them reacted by raising weapons, but the guard spoke first. “Halt! Identify yourselves.”
“Ha!” Grev pulled the trigger and the phaser knocked the man unconscious, flinging him back a bit to slump against the wall. “Identify that.” Of course, shouts came from just out of sight and there were soon weapons peeking around the corner to take more shots as the two of them shrank against the wall. “Bah! They have too much cover.”
There weren’t many options to consider and they needed space and time to reach the Vulcan ambassador. “How many grenades do you have left?”
Grev’s next phaser blast knocked the barrel of a rifle sticking out too far and Chekov hoped it stung the wielder through his armour. “Only ten.”
Which was more than the six Chekov could see and he fought to roll his eyes. “Only ten, he says. Do you feel like you could part with two of them to adjust our current situation for the better?”
“Two?” Chekov could hear the bushy eyebrows rise even though the Tellarite didn’t look up.
“Da. One for our friends around the corner and a second left where we are standing with a twenty-second delay while we run very quickly in the other direction, perhaps catching some stragglers.”
“Ha! You know, you’re a little more bloodthirsty than most Fleet sapients I’ve met. I like the way you think.” He pulled a pair of grenades from his belt.
“Thank you. It comes from being Russian.”
“Whatever that means.” The first grenade was in the air and a second one had already appeared in his hand. “Fire in the hole!”
Chekov watched the device bounce once on the floor just before the corner, arc up into the air and bounce again off the far wall to bank out of sight. He turned his eyes to avoid the flash and said a quick thanks for the helmet protecting his ears from the concussion.
Grev had already moved on to the next phase of the impromptu plan, however, and didn’t give Chekov time to wait. “Timer’s set, we’d better go.”
The two of them took off at a run. Keeping his breath under control, Chekov pointed ahead. “Turn left at the junction. There is a cross-connecting corridor that will bring us back toward the detention cells.”
Grev puffed a little, stubby but muscular legs working harder to keep up than Chekov’s did to set the running pace. “How much time did you spend studying the schematic?”
“Probably longer than I should have.” A disruptor blast hit the floor a metre to Chekov’s right and twice as far ahead. “They’re persistent.”
“That’s their bad judgement.” They turned the corner just as the explosion came, shaking the floor under them, and slowed to a light jog.
“Maybe that will gain us a little time, but we have to assume they called in seeing us even if the explosions don’t narrow our position down nicely.” He pointed ahead. “Turn right here. The detention centre is at the end of the next corridor.”
The corridor ahead of them was clear, but the door to the detention centre opened just as they arrived to spit out two guards who immediately dove to the floor, taking up prone positions on either side of the door. Chekov and Grev step back behind the corner and the Tellarite made a sour face. “Unfortunately, so are those guards. Maybe another grenade?”
Chekov shook his head. “We cannot risk harm to the ambassador.”
“I thought you might say that.” Grev sighed, a loud and significant gust of wind. “Well, the hard way, then.” He dropped to the floor and shimmied forward to peer around the corner, pulling the trigger repeatedly on his phaser. One of the two guards yelped, and Chekov was fairly certain he heard something hit the floor hard.
“Keep firing. Cover me.”
Grev grunted but didn’t respond otherwise. He had the feeling the Tellarite knew what Chekov intended and didn’t want to comment on the stupidity of the idea. Moving to the opposite wall, he took two quick steps and did a shoulder roll into the middle of the corridor, exposing himself completely but hopefully surprising the remaining guard. As Chekov popped up into an almost standing position, he watched the guard shift his aim from where Grev had been firing to train on Chekov. Knowing he couldn’t bring his own weapon to bear quick enough, he had already planned to dive forward and further confuse the man’s aim, but Grev’s next shot made it unnecessary.
The Tellarite was at his side almost before the man hit the floor. “Interesting tactic.”
“Trusting in the abilities of my partner?” He grinned. “It shouldn’t be.”
Shaking his head, Grev moved forward and the door to the detention centre slid open. They moved inside and, as their intelligence had told them to expect, only one cell was occupied, but its occupant was not someone Chekov expected.
“Commander!” Pulling his eyebrows under control, Chekov quickly shut his mouth. Best to stay on script for the scenario. “I mean, Ambassador Spock. I’m happy to find you in one piece.”
“It is agreeable to see you, Lieutenant.” The Vulcan didn’t even raise an eyebrow as the force field dropped and he stepped through the now-empty space. Of course, it wouldn’t, no matter who had come to his “rescue”. Spock wouldn’t break character, and Chekov didn’t think he should either, so it was worth continuing to play along. Hopefully, that would contribute a little to his final grade.
“And you, sir. I trust you have been treated well.”
Now an eyebrow did rise. “While it is, at times, conducive to reflection, confinement is rarely a satisfactory way to spend one’s time.”
“Of course not, sir. While I wish we could simply beam out from here, the installation has built in interference generators. We need to get back to the surface for transport.” While they’d achieved the first primary objective, the scenario wasn’t over yet, and there was still plenty of time for things to go wrong before they achieved the second of actually getting the Federation ambassador to safety. But there was a way to increase the odds a little, he thought. “Do you feel able to actively participate in our departure?”
“Certainly, Lieutenant, though I find myself unarmed.”
Thinking that the Vulcan was never really unarmed, Chekov reached for his belt and Grev began grumbling as Chekov handed Commander Spock his backup phaser pistol. “You know, every second we stand here runs the risk of someone figuring things out. We should get moving.”
“Logical.” Spock tilted the phaser to one side to check the power level, ensuring a full charge. Chekov hoped he wouldn’t have to fire it very much, but he also had the advantage of knowing Mr. Spock’s accuracy rating.
A rumble passed through the floor and the walls. A tiny bit of dust drifted down around them, surprising for the recent construction. Chekov looked up, suddenly wary of the ceiling. “It does sound like Bhatti and Grant are having some success with continued distractions, but you are correct, Grev. Let’s get to the rendezvous.”