A Matter of Honour

Chapter 20

The Romulan Sub-Commander surveyed the increasingly lit rough land stretching away towards the distant forest. Between the light breeze, the pleasant temperature, and the birdsong, this could have been an enjoyable posting, but he was, if he wanted to be honest with himself, extremely unhappy with how the situation was playing out. Klingon brat aside, there were far too many explosions occurring around the abandoned fortress for his liking. He sighed as another reached his ears, the fourth so far that morning. "Range and bearing?"

Beside him, Mahrek scowled at his sensor pack. "Readouts are unclear, Sub-Commander. The fortress—"

"Has far too much magnetite in it, as do many of the rocks in the valley. I know. All are posted to the walls?"

Looking up, Mahrek nodded. "Yes, Sub-Commander."

"Go find someone who saw it. I would like to know what they are blowing up. These are obviously meant to annoy us, but..." He let the words trail off as another thought occurred.

"Sub-commander?"

Shaking his head, he looked at the junior officer. "A distraction. There are several places where a single determined being might get into the fortress. Without completely stripping the walls, send two to each, then take one other with yourself to ensure our prisoners are comfortable." That would spread his force thin, but they would manage.

Mahrek came to a rigid attention and smacked his fist to his chest. "I obey." He immediately ran off, opening his communicator as he moved.

"Likely we are already quite late and one, at least, is inside." He sighed and turned his gaze on the young woman guarding the entrance to the observation room. "Centurion!"

She straightened and took several quick steps to his side. "Here, Sub-commander."

"I no longer care where the explosions occur but, as much as our sensors will tell us, I want to know if and where there are any additional explosive charges laid." Busy work, and he knew it. Likely the Centurion did as well. The sensors would give them next to nothing they could verify from a distance due to the magnetite.

Another fist to another breast plate. "Your command, Sub-commander." She began to move away and he called after her.

"My preference is for no one to be near them when they go off." The Centurion was quickly out of earshot. He shook his head, continued speaking if only to himself. "How many soldiers could the Federation have landed and how could they even have learned of our hiding place? I fear we may yet need every side arm."

*

Kalleg dragged a bit keeping pace with Chekov but seemed unwilling to let a human get more than a few centimetres ahead of him even when that human was leading the way. Eventually, he sighed again. "How can you possibly know where we're going, human?"

Chekov smiled, ready to show the young man he didn't know everything. He pointed ahead of them. "They dragged me down that flight of stairs. It goes up approximately five metres and empties out into another hallway. Two left turns back from that I smelled a fresh breeze from the outside. A right turn after that would bring us to the corridor that leads to the interrogation room."

Scowling, Kalleg stared daggers into the side of Chekov's head. "But you were almost unconscious when they threw you in the cell?"

"Ah, I was, wasn't I?" Chekov shrugged. "Well if that is what you saw, then it must be so." From the interrogation room, things would get more difficult, though. He had been actually unconscious when they'd brought him in from outside the wall. Unless his hearing really was working as well as he thought. Young Kalleg made it difficult to be certain.