They could hear the Orishans chittering and calling to each other in terror and desperation. There was so much happening so quickly that their translators could only lift out the odd word here and there among the screams.

   The end! Erykon! Fire! No! No! Please!and on and on.

  As the foundations of the Spire trembled and shook, Vale allowed herself a grudging admiration for these creatures. They had built downward, deep into the ground, in an attempt to hide their civilization from the wrath of their god, and so far, their structures had withstood the worst their angry deity could dish out.

  Still, that didn’t mean Vale wanted herself and the others to be there when and if the walls did come tumbling down.

  Had this been a normal cell, with solid doors and pickable locks, she might have had them free already. She had a knack for that sort of thing left over from her peace officer days. The trouble was, there were no locks. Like most of Orishan technology, the cells were a combination of organic material, that metallic resin that seemed to make up ninety percent of their constructions, and the ubiquitous energy fields that had already caused her people so much grief.

  Without tools or even a tricorder to generate a disruptive field, they were stuck here in the bowels of a world that was shaking itself to death.

  She looked over at Ra-Havreii who, despite their current predicament, seemed somehow more relaxed than she had ever seen him. It was as if he’d been carrying an invisible weight around all this time that was suddenly removed.

  He had his combadge off and was fiddling with its guts, trying perhaps to boost its signal enough to contact Keru or Troi. The Orishans, ignorant of their function, had left both Vale and Ra-Havreii with their badges. If Keru had gotten out somehow, or Troi for that matter, the field around Vale and Ra-Havreii might still prevent them making contact.

  “How’s it coming, Doctor?” she said.

  “Well enough,” he said, still fiddling away. “This is delicate work to be doing in the middle of an earthquake with only a bit of wire for a tool.”

  “I feel your pain, Commander,” she said, bracing herself to ride out the current temblor. “But I’d like to feel it on the surface with Troi and Keru, if we can manage that.”

  He said something-something pithy, she was sure-but just at that moment, the quaking grew so severe that she was smashed to the floor despite her efforts to hold on.

  Then, just as abruptly, the shaking stopped. She pulled herself up again, casting around to see if maybe that last jolt had ripped an opening in the wall that they might climb through. She would even have settled for the damned force field losing power as its unseen generator was crushed under tons of dirt and crystal. No such luck.

  The fields and the walls and the ceiling and the floor were all as intact and functional as when she’d been tossed in.

  “Dammit,” she said, angry at her complete impotence in the face of this catastrophe. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

  “Wait, Commander,” he said.

  “Wait? Wait for what?”

  “Just listen,” he said.

  She was about to ask him what there was to hear when she heard it.

  Silence.

  Absolute, all-pervasive silence had descended on their little prison and, apparently, the universe beyond. There were no screams, no sounds of shredding or exploding machinery, so abject Orishan pleas for Erykon’s nonexistent mercy. There was nothing, nothing at all.

  Ra-Havreii smiled and extended his hand. “May I have your combadge, please?” he said.

  She gave it to him and watched, fascinated, as he held them both up against the wall containing both the exit and the energy field blocking it.

  A low-pitched whine began to emanate from the badges. She felt it in her bones as much as she heard it, a persistent and, frankly, discomfiting vibration that made her teeth ache.

  There was a flash, a brief rainbow halo around the two badges, that was followed by what appeared to be a liquid ripple running through the wall. When the rippling stopped, so did the ache in her teeth. The noise was gone.

  Ra-Havreii handed her badge back to her and pressed his palm against the exit door, which slid instantly and easily to one side.

  “Pressure sensitive,” he said.

  The field was down. The door was open. They could, with a little luck, locate the others and get the hell out of here before the quakes resumed. She had no plan beyond that yet, but just now, she didn’t need one. Let them find Troi and Keru first. Let them all get to the surface. Then they could search for the shuttle and maybe get off this rock.

  “Well done, Commander,” she said, replacing the badge on her tunic. She also was beginning to feel a bit more like herself again. Even with Ra-Havreii’s findings about the crashed starship, they had no real evidence that Titanhad not still been destroyed in the conflagration, but she had what she needed: hope. “Very well done.”

  “I believe, Commander Vale,” said the Efrosian, moving past her into the corridor beyond, “this is the appropriate juncture in our relationship for you to start calling me Xin.”

  The Orishan holding cells were really just storage containers as it turned out, the place where the larval jelly was mixed and warehoused until it could be processed and consumed.

  There was no crime on Orisha, after all, and therefore, no need for jails. Vale had been unsettled by the idea of being broken down into base chemicals to supply meals for the Mater’s young. Now, seeing the jelly itself flooding out from behind each cell door Ra-Havreii opened, and moreover, seeing the remaining bits of animal and insect carcass still breaking down inside-well, unsettling just didn’t cover it.

  She hurried the engineer to the last few doors and hoped, whatever else Erykon’s wrath might have done, that it had allowed their friends to survive.

  They found Keru first, essentially unharmed but for the bruise on his head and itching for some one-on-one time with the bug who had hit him. Vale was happier to see the big Trill than she could have imagined. She actually felt a bit naked when he wasn’t present to cover her six. He took the news about Titan’s possible survival fairly well.

  “I knew it,” he said, slapping the Efrosian’s back. “I knewshe wouldn’t go down without a fight.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” said Ra-Havreii, gasping. “But my scapulae might not be so sturdy.”

  They found Troi almost instantly, and though she had not been physically damaged either, she had, nonetheless, been hurt. When the door on her cell slid away, she never moved from the corner of the room into which she had presumably crawled. She only sat there, hugging her knees and staring straight ahead, her enormous ebony eyes seeing nothing.

  She didn’t respond to their entry, and at first Vale feared the worst.

  “What’s wrong with her?” said Keru.

  It was the fertility treatments she had undergone, Vale realized in a flash. The same side effect that had made it possible for the little Betazoid to project emotions intensely enough to incapacitate a passerby had also left her more open to the emotions of those around her.

  Vale and the others had sat through the Orishan cataclysm, listened to the terror in their screams, the horror in every cry for mercy as the apocalypse they had feared for generations finally rained down.

  Troi had not only heard all that, she had felt it as well. Vale could only imagine what damage all that terror flowing in and out of her mind might do. Catatonia might be the least of it. But even now she knew that the true reason for Troi’s state was a private matter between her and her husband, so Vale answered Keru’s question with a simple, “I don’t know.”