Title: After the Rescue

Part: NEW 20/73

Author: Karmen Ghia, karmen_ghia@yahoo.com

Series: TOS

Romance Code: S/Mc and then some.

Rating: NC-17

Appendices: http://members.tripod.com/karmen_ghia/atrappendices.html

See part one for disclaimers, etc.

KalzatMzir stood in the shadows under the prison assessing the situation and it didn't look great.

Plan A was to create a diversion when the prison ship began to load. The main problem was that the Commune did not know where, exactly, this would take place.

Kalzat was not a telepath so he was relying on Tien, Farro, Polmira, Master Pzchaz and Master Whilla to jump one of the guards and pull it out of their thick head. So far all the guards they'd jumped had not known the location and time was growing short.

Tien swung silently around the corner and into his arms.

"They'll load from the east gate, darling," he whispered.

This was bad news but better than not knowing. The east gate was the most visible and best defended and therefore the most reasonable to use for loading a mass of prisoners.

"Good work, fara. Round everyone up and meet me by the east gate. Good thing you got lucky."

"Luck is for rabbits," Tien stated flatly, shaking his hair off his shoulders. "However, we will need some at the east gate." He pecked Kalzat on the cheek and was gone.

* * *

Sarek came cautiously to consciousness. His most recent conscious experiences had been excruciating and he was not anxious to meet them again. However, he pushed his reservations away and slowly, carefully, came to full awareness. The first thing he noted was that he was no longer in agony. The second was that someone was curled up next to him with their head on his chest. He drew back to look at the creature, who was looking up at him.

"Maja?" Sarek was so stunned he could barely sigh out the syllables.

"Yes, Lord Sarek," Maja whispered in his heavily Rom accented Vulcan. "How do you feel?"

"I still have some pain in my legs but otherwise fine." He pulled Maja's hand away from his thigh, noting that Maja still had an accent one could cut with a knife after all these years. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to fix you up," Maja snapped, reclaiming his hand away and placing it firmly back on the Vulcan's thigh.

Sarek, remembering how determined Maja Talljet could be on Vulcan, did not resist. He was still and glad when the pain was gone. He felt weak but knew only time would cure that. And hungry but knew from his surroundings there was likely no help for that.

Maja reached into his cloak and drew out a handful of Beva nuts. Sarek, somewhat surprised, gratefully accepted them, along with a water tab.

"Where are we?" Sarek asked between nuts.

"In the transport prison."

"What is that?"

"It's the prison where persons deemed to be incorrigible are held until they are transported to a prison work planet. This lot is bound for Rist."

"Are we part of this lot?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Maja accepted a Beva nut from Sarek's hand and fell silent. They sat together quietly. Sarek was gathering his strength for the next conversation, which he expected to be difficult.

"Now, Maja," Sarek said firmly, "tell me what you are doing here."

Maja sighed and launched into the edited version of the truth he'd prepared for Spock's father.

"I saw you arrested in the cathedral and followed you here. I got in and healed you as best I could. I'm hoping some friends will rescue us before we get loaded onto the prison ship that is coming in the morning."

Sarek listened to this brief account and found it a little too streamlined. He waited an appropriate amount of time to determine that Maja had no more to say.

"Why were you in the cathedral?" he asked levelly.

"I work there," Maja replied shortly.

"Are you with the Commune?"

"Yes."

"What do you do there?"

Maja considered saying 'I'm a bed boy' but suppressed it. He said instead: "I cut stone and cast metals and paint a little." 'True enough for you, Vulcan,' he thought.

Sarek decided to accept this because he remembered Maja drawing and painting on Vulcan. He even had a pen and ink landscape Maja had given him in a fit of affection for his son. He looked at it every day in his office on Vulcan.

"How do you come to be with the Commune?" Sarek asked.

Maja compressed his lips. Sarek remembered this as a sign of irritation but did not withdraw the question. He waited a reasonable amount of time for an answer.

"Maja, I asked you..."

"Sarek," he snapped, "this is not the time or place for you to interrogate me. Why don't you go back to sleep for a while?"

Sarek knew he wasn't up to a fight just then. He decided a brief nap would refresh him and dozed off.

Maja watched over his sleep and felt a little guilty for being short with the Vulcan.

'These are,' Maja thought, 'after all, only logical questions.' He arranged Sarek's cloak to better cover the Vulcan. In the quiet of the cell he began to pray that the Commune would get them out of this.

* * *

Kalzat's plan could have been used in a textbook at the Klingon Academy where he had recently been to school. The plan was elegant in its simplicity. Members of the Commune would create a diversion while a small band with phasers stunned their way into the mass of prisoners and liberated Master Ghet and Sarek the Vulcan. It could only fail if the diversion was not great enough or the amount of guards was larger than expected.

Kalzat surveyed his preparations from the shadows and thought of how much he loved Master Ghet. He'd been raised in the Commune when his father was executed for displeasing the Emperor and his mother, Kaziria, sought refuge there. Kalzat had grown up with Tien and they'd fallen in love. Kaziria's family had made peace with the Tajz and she was allowed to return. Her son was offered a place in the Klingon Academy and reluctantly followed his mother back to the homeworld. Two years were enough to prove to him and everyone around him that, although he was a brilliant student and tactician, he had been in the Commune too long to possess the temperament required of a Klingon Warrior. It was a relief to come home and just be Kalzat again.

The Commune was glad to have him back as well. One never knew when one would need a brilliant tactician. Especially in the places this Commune found itself.

Such as the one they were in now. If this plan did not work Master Ghet would be forced into a prison ship bound for hell and the Commune had no way to follow until Captain Talljet arrived in two days.

'We shall succeed,' Kalzat chanted as his mantra, checking his phaser for the nth time.

In the dim, pre-dawn light he watched the prison ship dock and extend the loading ramp. The huge doors opened on the darkness within and Kalzat could smell the stench of filth and decay. It was how he imagined the mouth of hell must be.

The Klingon was encouraged to see only twenty guards, ten on either side of the ramp, take up their positions.

'We shall succeed. We shall succeed. We shall succeed. Please god ... '

* * *

"Sarek," Maja whispered as the cell doors banged open. "We're going. Stay close to me."

Maja helped him to his feet and supported the Vulcan toward the doors. Orders to move out of the cell were barked over loudspeakers. Evidently the throng of prisoners was not moving fast enough because a low level shock went over the floor.

Maja and Sarek, being Vulcanoid, were not much discomforted by the shock but did not wish to feel it again. They joined the swifter crowd surging out the door and down the corridor.

Maja cursed in Patois. Still no guards to influence so they could slip away. Perhaps, with luck, when they were outside, between the gate and ship. But which gate? And how far is the ship? 'Please god, let Kalzat be successful.'

* * *

Kalzat and the Commune had moved into position when Imstk and over a hundred of his guards arrived. Imstk directed his thugs into position along the ramp, behind the twenty regular prison guards. Kalzat noticed the proceedings were being recorded.

'Imstk must want proof of what a great danger he saved Rovirin from. An old Vulcan who didn't want any trouble in the first place.' Kalzat sneered, trying to keep his sinking spirits up. He caught sight of Tien's worried face in the crowd coming toward him.

"We're ready," Tien murmured. "This looks bad, lover."

"It should not affect us," Kalzat assured him. "You get the diversion going and leave the rest to me."

Tien disappeared back into the crowd.

Kalzat surveyed the scene and concluded that he would have to stun eight or nine, instead of two or three, guards to get to Master Ghet.

'I can do this, I know I can.'

* * *

Maja and Sarek stepped blinking into the dawn and toward the ship. Maja looked with horror at the guards five deep on either side of them. There were too many to distract or influence. He prayed they were not too many for the Commune.

At that moment he heard screaming and the sound of a huge engine. He caught sight of a burning truck crashing through the crowd from the north. He looked south and felt more than saw Kalzat phasering his way through the guards.

"Sarek, stay with me!" Maja cried, pulling the Vulcan southward.

The burning truck plunged into the guards behind them causing the crowd of prisoners to surge forward toward the ship. Maja fought the wave as best he could and hung onto Sarek but they were swept even closer to the door. He looked back to see Kalzat trying to get through the panicky crowd and resolute guards. Maja heard phaser fire behind him but didn't know whose. He and Sarek dug in their heels and fought to stay put but the momentum of the crowd was too much for them. They were pushed closer and closer to the ship.

Kalzat, now joined by Tien, was fighting his way through what was now a riot. He saw Master Khat and Hraja fighting in from the other side and Master Whilla and the journeyman Laza battling in somewhere to his right. Half the guards had turned to face the crowd and repel the waves of hysterical people fleeing the fires the burning truck had started. It was the perfect diversion. There were just too many guards and the throng of prisoners had swept Master Ghet and Sarek too far forward for the Commune to rescue them. Kalzat flung himself at the guards with a howl of pure Klingon rage that turned to despair as he saw Master Ghet and Sarek swept inside the ship and out of sight. Behind him, Imstk's reinforcements were firing into the crowd. Kalzat and Tien made one last desperate lunge toward the ship before the doors closed. If they could at least get inside ... With the prisoners all inside the guards broke formation and the crowd surged across the ramp. Tien and Kalzat got within three meters of the doors only to see them close with a thump and have the ramp jerked out from under them. They rolled away, clenching their teeth in rage and despair and ran for cover as the ship lifted off with Master Gozine Gozshedrefreingin Ghet and Sarek of Vulcan inside.

* * *

Not only had Imstk had the ship's loading recorded, he'd had it broadcast to the planet. This was to prove his complete control of the city and therefore of Rovirin.

Captain Norris and her bridge crew watched the proceedings in helpless horror. Upon learning of Sarek's arrest, she had reported it to Star Fleet and after what seemed a long delay was ordered not to interfere. Norris decided to interpret this as an order not to transport a security team to the planet to retrieve the three Vulcans (Sovort and Smirek were still somewhere on the planet). She ordered a scan for the Vulcan's Federation ID implants. She was unable to locate any of them due to the shields around the government buildings they were held in.

"Get a fix on Sarek and beam him aboard," Norris ordered upon spotting the Vulcan in the throng of prisoners.

God knows the Shilo's crew tried but there was too much confusion and too little time. They watched the Ristian prison ship rise out of sight.

"Prepare to leave orbit, Lt. Lau. Follow that ship but stay out of scanner range." Norris hated to leave Sovort and Smirek on the planet but at least she knew Sarek was alive and the trail was hot.

"Transmit this broadcast to Star Fleet." Norris hoped if she was unsuccessful in retrieving Sarek, Star Fleet would send another ship after him. She rather doubted it somehow. The isolationist movement on Terra was so strong it was even influencing Star Fleet decisions.

The Shilo moved slowly deeper into non-aligned space, toward the area known as the Tziviian Autonomous Zone.

* * *

end of part 20

This story also lives at http://members.tripod.com/karmen_ghia/

Appendices: http://members.tripod.com/karmen_ghia/atrappendices.html