Chapter Text
Languages:
“Federation Standard”
“Kardasi”
<<tlhIngan Hol>>
< Rihan>
Part 1: Escape from Internment Camp 371
Chapter 1: Prologue
Working by feel almost as much as by sight in the dim crawl space, Garak pried open the next relay switch in the series and began the painstaking process of re-wiring it to send its segment of the message to the runabout.
The barracks outside the crawl space were silent. The sounds of angry voices, combat, disruptor fire – gone. No one spoke. There was no sound of approaching Jem'Hadar footsteps.
Not yet, but there would be soon.
He finished the modification of the switch. No time to replace the cover.
One more wire. He disconnected it and pulled it around … but it wouldn't move. The wire wasn't long enough to reach its new destination. Garak pulled the wire out – too hard. His elbow collided with the wall behind him. All the walls immediately seemed to press in tighter. Any moment, he would be crushed – and there was no air!
Not now, Garak. Focus!
His hands were shaking, his lungs struggling to draw in enough of the stale air.
Focus! Garak pulled the wire around on the other side of a coupling and tried again. This time, the wire reached its destination. He connected it.
All that remained was to connect the transmitter to the power grid.
Assuming he'd wired all the circuits he'd just finished correctly.
There was no time to double check, but less time for error. He activated the light and looked over all five of the circuits … yes. All were wired correctly, and connected securely.
Now to get out of here! Garak reached for the transmitter's connector and attached it to the power supply. The indicator light lit up. “Got it!” he said.
The transporter activated.
For a horrible moment, he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
Everything faded to blackness.
And then he was back, memories and body intact, out of the accursed crawl space. On the runabout. Facing the viewport. He could see space, and distant stars.
But there was no time to waste.
He stepped off the transporter pad and activated the transporter.
Worf and Martok materialized on the pad. As soon as the pad was clear, he activated it again. Bashir and the female Romulan materialized in their place.
The transporter went silent.
Garak scanned the camp. There was no sign of the male Romulan or the Breen.
Perhaps they had been killed by the disruptor fire he'd heard from inside the crawl space.
He deactivated the scanners and transporter – it would not do to allow any remaining Romulans or Breen from elsewhere in the camp to be beamed aboard – and took the pilot's seat.
Quickly, he entered an access code and activated the impulse engines. Not taking the time to lay in a course, he manually turned the runabout and accelerated, leaving the internment camp behind.
The buzzing anxiety that told him to get out and get away, now, had not vanished with the transporter beam. The crushing sensation of walls pressing in on him was less pronounced in the relatively spacious runabout, but it was still present. His heart was still racing, and his hands weren't entirely steady.
They were still too close to the Jem'Hadar facility. Much too close.
There were voices around him.
No matter. He ignored them. He pressed the controls to accelerate the ship to full impulse, and began the process of powering up the warp engines.
One of the voices called his name.
Commander Worf.
Garak froze. He did not need a lecture on his failings now; on how he almost got them all killed, as Tain had predicted.
Nor did he need the humiliation of seeing the evidence of what the Starfleet Klingon warrior had faced over the last … how long had it been? The time had seemed interminable, but it could not have been more than a few weeks; perhaps only days.
Commander Worf had valiantly battled one Jem'Hadar soldier after another, despite what must have been, and must still be, quite painful injuries. Broken ribs, countless bruises, cuts still visible on his face, perhaps other injuries he concealed.
All the while, he had been almost completely defeated by nothing more than cramped working conditions. Yes, the lighting had been unpredictable. Yes, there had been little ventilation, and the exposed wiring did have an unfortunate tendency to emit unpredictable electrical shocks, but that was nothing compared to the daily battering Worf had stoically endured.
He attempted to school his features into a calm, neutral expression, and turned to look at Worf.
“You did well,” Worf said, solemnly and sincerely. His respectful gaze and tone and complimentary words were not at all what Garak expected.
There was no time at the moment to puzzle out the implications of that.
Instead, he inclined his head in respectful acknowledgment. “So did you,” he replied.
Worf returned the gesture, and allowed General Martok and the Romulan to assist him to the back.
Garak turned back to his panel and checked the readouts. The warp engines were active and operating within acceptable parameters.
Doctor Bashir approached and stood behind him, looking over his shoulder at the controls. “Take us to maximum warp, Garak. We've got to get a message to the station.”
Garak nodded. He pressed the controls, and the runabout accelerated to Warp 1... 2 ... 3.
He scanned the vicinity for other ships while Dr. Bashir prepared his message to Deep Space Nine.
The sensors detected no ships at all.
No Jem'Hadar ship caught them in its tractor beam. None fired upon them.
There was no sign of pursuit. No sign of any Jem'Hadar ships at all.
Garak initiated long-range scans for neutrinos and any other sign of active cloaking devices.
Nothing.
Only their runabout, racing away at maximum warp now.
Dr. Bashir finished his message to Deep Space Nine, sent it, and went to the back to treat Worf's injuries.
Still no sign of pursuit.
* * *
Garak scanned the area again, and again.
Still nothing.
That was … disconcerting. There should be Jem'Hadar ships near the internment camp. They should have been deployed following their escape. Surely their escape had been noted and reported!
Yet almost three hours after their escape, as they neared the nebula where he and Worf were captured, there was still no sign of pursuit.
Garak gave the nebula a wide berth, constantly monitoring the sensor data from passive as well as active scans of the area.
Nothing. No fighters, no Jem'Hadar ships big enough to dwarf Galor-class war ships.
There was no sign of any ship at all, other than their own runabout.
Garak laid in a course for the wormhole and activated the auto-pilot. He continued scanning the surrounding space. The sensors detected several asteroids, none populated, and a small concentration of hydrogen gas.
Still no ships.
As time passed, pursuit began to seem less and less likely, and Garak began to find his attention drifting. He had been piloting for little more than three and a half hours, but the interminable days of alternately working in the crawl space and freezing in the barracks, dreading the necessity of going back in again, were catching up to him.
He needed to rest. Needed to sleep.
He should turn over the controls to someone else and at least attempt to sleep, as unlikely as that scenario was, considering what constituted beds on the runabout.
But there was no one else. Doctor Bashir was occupied with treating Commander Worf's wounds. The only other people on board were General Martok and the Romulan. They had proven their trustworthiness at the prison camp, but they could hardly be entrusted with the piloting of a Federation craft.
Garak sighed. He could not relinquish command of the bridge yet, but he had little choice but to rest for a while. He made sure all the alarms were set for audio as well as visual alerts.
There was nothing else to do.
He leaned back in the seat and allowed himself to close his eyes.
* * *
He was back in the internment camp, trapped within the crawl space of Barracks 6.
“You've doomed us all,” Tain's voice said.
Tain stood beside him, watching scornfully as Garak tried to ignore the smallness of the space and the lack of air, tried to maintain enough control to focus on his simple, albeit time-consuming, task. “If there's room for me to work in here, which I assure you there is, there's plenty of room for you.”
But there wasn't enough room. The walls pressed in on him from every side, crumbling into dust and rubble.
Trapping him.
He couldn't move.
There was no air!
Gasping, Garak opened his eyes. For a disconcerting moment, he didn't know where he was. Only that there was no rubble, no dust.
Not Tzenketh, then, or that dreadful tunnel in Doctor Bashir's holosuite program.
He forced himself to slow his breathing, to take a deep breath.
After a few tries, he succeeded.
The air cleared his mind, a little.
He looked around. Of course. He was on the runabout. The USS Rubicon. Traveling at maximum warp toward the distant wormhole and Deep Space Nine.
Far, now, from Internment Camp 371.
Garak turned his attention to his panel, the viewports in front, the viewscreens. He did not want to fall asleep again. Instead, he busied himself by running every scan he could think of. He manually monitored the proximity sensors, the engine status, and the runabout's speed, regularly checked the readouts for the runabout's constant passive scans, searching for everything from asteroids to subspace messages to unusual concentrations of a variety of chemical elements and compounds, and continued scanning, constantly, for any sign of pursuit by the Jem'Hadar or the presence of any other ship in the vicinity.
He paused only to replicate a cup of tea – a not entirely unpleasant facsimile of red leaf, delightfully warm in the chill of the Federation ship – before returning to his work.
The work served its purpose. It kept him awake and it kept his mind off … other things. For the most part.
His hands trembled, just a little, and his head throbbed with the almost inevitable stress-induced headache, as well as the residual ache from the Jem'Hadar soldier's blow, but those were only minor inconveniences.
He was in control of himself again, fulfilling his duty to bring the runabout and its passengers and crew back to the Alpha Quadrant.