The Unexpected Prize. Part Two

Posted on Wed Jul 6th, 2022 @ 8:41pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & [DECEASED] Gil Silnan Tolbarr & Commodore Jacob Kane & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII

Mission: Shore Leave
Location: Rondac Planetary Installation: Power Plant.
Timeline: After Part one
5570 words - 11.1 OF Standard Post Measure

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The two Breen hesitated, giving each other a look as if questioning everything behind their cryo-helmets. One of them made a robotic hissing noise, then looked at the Vulcan again waiting to see if she would answer.

P’rel ‘s jaw tensed. She had no idea what the two Breen guards had said. Flicking through the few logical options in her head, she decided to just go with one and see; all the while giving a slight bend in her knees ready to drop Silnan and pounce, with a grip on the blade handle tightened further. “Of course I’m Lieutenant P’rel’s clone! You walking icicle, now go ready a holding area!”. Hoping that Keating was ready to shoot just in case, the Vulcan suspected that death or success may just hinge on what happened in the coming seconds…
---

The two Breen hesitated a second time. Exchanging further looks between one another, another set of hisses and whines clashed as the pair seemed to disagree on something; whether that was that she was telling the truth, or whether to just shoot her on the spot, it wasn't entirely clear, but they were just short of coming to blows.

Finally, as though they had come to some sort of parley, they turned back to P'rel and sounded off another series of noises. Though notably, they didn't seem quite as on their guard this time.

P'rel eyed the Cardassian who had now risen and was rubbing his jaw and looking intensely angered; that he hadn't shot her bode well however and suggested there was at least a tentative belief in her facade. Looking back to the Breen, they didn't seem to find it odd that she could apparently understand them, and yet the Cardassian man clearly couldn't and that also was not seemingly an oddity. Taking a moment to analyse the supposed normative factors in the situation; there was a reason why it wasn't out of place for only some people to understand the Breen and it was more likely than not, that it was a factor of rank and therefore an opportunity to create division.

Still having no actual idea what the Breen had said, she had to make a best guess and portray a comprehensive understanding. "He was serving in the intelligence department on the Athena..." she said, referring to Silnan by shrugging his limp body and using the motion to draw the knife out of her waistband discreetly. "...he has vital information and needs to be woken and interrogated immediately". She looked at the Cardassian who was himself looking between herself and the Breen carefully. "His lot did this to the prisoner" she said, nodding towards the Cardassian, "and if he dies before we can interrogate him I will make sure Thot Sek and the others know to blame you as well as their kind" she finished.

The Breen guards took another moment, then after a very pregnant pause, took a few tentative steps out of P'rel's direct path.

Wondering whether a non V'tosh Vulcan could have pulled off such an egregious manoeuvre in confidence trickery, P'rel snapped at the pair to carry the momentum, dropping the knife back into her waistband. "Don't just stand there! Prepare someone to hold this scum, and alert the ranking officer that I have a priority prisoner!". Though she hoped that she, Silnan and Keating could just use the power systems to blow the facility into a smoking crater, it was possible that some kind of command code would be needed to override a safety protocol...and now was as good an opportunity as ever to lure a commander of some kind into a trap.

Finn let out a sigh of relief as the guards cleared the way for P'rel, but remained confused when the Vulcan didn't immediately go inside. Instead, she looked as though she was yelling at the Breen. Of course, she always has to find someone to yell at. Even if it means yelling at the enemy in the middle of an operation, Finn rolled her eyes before moving her rifle to eye the ladder. Luckily it remained unattended. Finn looked back towards the entrance, hoping P'rel had finally moved inside so that she could make her run for the roof.

P'rel watched as the two Breen clicked and whizzed at each other, walking away and through the doors to the building. She carefully observed whether there was any kind of scan or manual obstacle to entering the sliding doorway, and was relived to see the Breen walking right through without so much as slowing down for a personnel scan. "You, help me with him a moment..." she ordered the Cardassian, now reasonably sure that the clone she was pretending to be sit at the very least just a little higher up the chain of command than the three door guards.

Still feeling particularly affronted, the Cardassian guard did as instructed - though painfully slowly. As though carrying out the task was the last thing he wished to do.

As the man approached, P'rel released her left hand and made as if she was going to gain the Cardassian's assistance to lower Silnan to the ground. As he got close enough, her left hand instead found the nerve clusters in the neck which when pinched, rendered most humanoids unconscious. As he slumped, P'rel shoved him away and tried to keep hold of Silnan, using her free hand to signal to Keating that she should run for the ladder. P'rel, adjusting Silnan's limp weight again across her shoulders, header for the door the Breen had entered through.

Finn wasn't sure what P'rel was signaling, but she seemed in the clear and the run to the ladder seemed unwatched also. This was her chance. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and took a deep breath, steadying against the rock to move into a running position. Her body still hadn't recovered from the earlier experience with their Cardassian interrogator, but all Finn had to do was remember how much worse Silnan had it and that was enough to get her inner voice to stop complaining of pain.

After one final look, Finn tore off towards the ladder. The air was hot as it filled her lungs and her feet felt heavy from exhaustion but before long she had arrived. The climb proved frustrating as she struggled to grasp the ladder fully with her disabled right hand. Every rung felt like an insult to her once perfectly functioning body as she dragged herself upwards and onto the roof.

Seeing Keating disappear from view and up the side of the structure, P'rel made her way inside. Vulcan musculature was dense and complex, and they were generally far stronger than most comparably sized humanoids, but even she was now struggling with the limp weight of Silnan draped across her shoulders. The room before her was enormous, the surface structure being only a top floor of what was a huge dugout building. An enormous warehouse spread before her, going down at least what would be three or four starship decks, filled with pulsing blue cylinders like warp cores. Clearly they were in the right place, and a detonation of this kind of power matrix could very well take a decent sized chunk out of Rondac III altogether. To her right, about halfway along the length of the large bay, was a control room of sorts. Large windows looked out over the power cores, and the room itself was suspended from the ceiling with a single door access. Logically speaking, there would be a hatch of some kind to the roof, and a way in for Keating. Looking across the bay, P'rel could clearly see a Starfleet Admiral, two Cardassians frantically working consoles, and the two Breen she had sent indoors. If they were speaking to the Admiral about the 'prisoner', then the element of surprise would be lost, and their margin of time would rapidly evaporate.

Finn crouched as she carefully walked along the roof of the building. Spotting three hatches in varying locations, she decided it would be best to peak through each before deciding where to enter. The first hatch emptied out to a large pile of cargo containers that shot up from the floor to the ceiling, making it impossible to see anything else. The second provided a better view of the large warehouse-like room and mesmerizing power cores. Finn's head carefully dropped further through the access to survey the entire site, eventually eyeing the control room some fifty feet away from her. She quickly popped her head out as curiosity struck. Isn't the other hatch right over that room? She excitedly looked over the roof towards where the control room would be and there it was. The third hatch would serve as her entry point.

Rolling her feet, Finn walked as silently as possible to the access point before dropping to her stomach and releasing the hatch ever so slightly to look inside. As she expected, the control room was not empty. From her sliver of a view, Finn saw at least two Cardassians. She shifted around a bit more, sticking her head out slightly to survey the entire room, and counted two additional Breen and....an Admiral? Was he a prisoner or a clone? Finn wondered what the implications were of either answer and decided it would be best to assume he was a clone, for now, especially considering the fact that he seemed to be talking on terms with the others in the room. It at least didn't seem as though he was a prisoner.

We really should've planned this better, Finn thought as she moved back to the previous hatch in hopes of spotting P'rel. A five-to-one ratio was not good odds if she had to attempt to take the control room herself. She peaked out of the hatch again and searched for the Vulcan, eventually finding her closer to the side of the room. "Psssttt," Finn made a noise and stretched her neck out a little further until she had caught P'rel's attention.

Her Vulcan left ear twitching as the most shrill, irritating sound reverberated down her ear canal, P'rel craned her head around to find the usual source of annoying sounds sticking her head down from a hatch. She looked as Keating did some kind of...dance....?

The intelligence officer was too far away to yell without raising suspicion so Finn used her hands and pointed at P'rel. She then made her good hand move in a talking signal before pointing to the control room. Then she pointed to herself before making finger guns and pew pewing the air. The show finally ended with a forming of fists that turned into jazz hands in a clear explosion. In her head, saying," you distract in the control room, me pew pew bad people from above, then we blow everything up." Finn put her thumb out and waited for a signal that P'rel understood everything she had relayed.

P'rel blinked in complete bemusement. "Even telepathy couldn't help that woman..." she muttered to herself, carefully setting Silnan down in a recess behind a support strut. He seemed to stir a little, and the sudden change in body position had caused his arm stump to resume a steady flow of blood. There was little she could do for him at the moment, and so P'rel looked back to Keating who was by now sending her a clearly very anxious gaze. Nodding, P'rel rose to her feet and felt at least three metres tall now she was clear of Silnan's weight. She had no idea what Keating wanted with her hand movements, but logically the only possible course of action for the Vulcan was to head to the control room. Perhaps she might continue her luck by remaining in character.

Taking a breath in to steady herself and access the emotions needed for the portrayal, P'rel worked her slow walk up into a steady and urgent pace; not quite distressed, but clearly very worried about something. As she made her move from the control room, Keating's face disappeared from the hatch as well. "Admiral!" P'rel called. "Admiral!". The Cardassians in the room immediately gripped their pistols, whilst the two Breen from earlier seemed nonplussed. "The prisoner!". She studied his face, trying to recognise him...as she did so, it was as if a million pieces of a puzzle all fell into place at once....Admiral White...

At that moment, a beam of light struck from the ceiling like lightning and the first Cardassian went down. The others looked around in confusion allowing Finn just enough time to strike one of the Breen. It was then that someone finally noticed the business end of a rifle peaking out of the ceiling hatch, and return fire began to center around her position. Finn dodged left and kicked the hatch fully open, allowing for a larger view of the room below. She shifted around looking for the next target, but couldn't see the remaining Cardassian, Breen, or the Admiral. Assuming they were purposely keeping out of view or that P'rel had caught their attention, Finn swung through the access hatch into the room.

Taking cue from Keating, P’rel dropped to the floor and swept her legs through the Admiral’s ankles sending him crashing to the floor. As another set of bright discharges rocketed across the room, the athletic Vulcan leaped to the only target she could see. The remaining Breen, whizzing and chirping loudly, was struggling to unlock his weapon. In a fluid and rapid motion, P’rel feinted to the left to draw an attack, then pivoted to the right, drawing the blade in her waistband. As she spun around the back of the Breen guard, she sunk it hard into his lower helmet seal. High pitched clicks and whizzes emanated from the voice box as a crack of sparks preceded a heavy gushing of white cloud of coolant. The Breen dropped to the floor and accidentally absorbed a beam discharge fired from the remaining Cardassian. Gripping her side which was now weeping blood, P’rel dropped into cover behind a console. “Far wall! One armed target!” She called to Keating, wincing in pain at the worsening knife wound in her side which was now bleeding heavier, the makeshift cauterisation having failed.

White dropped hard onto his back, his left leg twisting at an awkward angle. Searing pain shot up from his knee and a gut wrenching crunch sickened him as he gripped the impossibly twisted joint. He didn't think it was broken, but he wasn't a young man anymore, and there was definitely some serious cartilage damage of some kind. He writhed silently on the floor, trying to slink into a covered position as weapons discharges cracked and whizzed overhead. Tapping his wrist communicator, he coughed through the discomfort, the fallback order he'd never wanted to give; "Protocol Nine. Protocol Nine...."

Finn dove behind a control panel as a beam of fire came from where P'rel had pointed. She crawled on her stomach enough to get a sliver of a view of the remaining guard and took aim with the rifle. It took a couple of shots, but the last guard finally fell. With a sigh of relief, she slowly got up as the adrenaline in her body faded. She looked to the Admiral and walked towards her Vulcan counterpart. "Do you think he's a clone?"

White looked up at the human, and then to the Vulcan. He didn't recognise either of them, but they were both clearly injured. Perhaps they were from the Athena, or part of a strike team from another of the Starfleet ships which had arrived with the Task Force.

Protocol Nine had activated the remaining Jem'Hadar sleeping cell, and within minutes the entire building was going to be overrun with some of the most ferocious soldiers the galaxy had ever seen. And all of them under his command. If he could just delay them, keep them talking a few minutes. "Of course I am" he lied, "Admiral White is long gone...". He permitted himself a brief peek at the ladder up the ceiling hatch, roughly working out how long it would take him to get up and into the waiting shuttlecraft with his injured knee.

P'rel leaned down to White and came nose to nose, looking him dead straight in the eye. She moved the knife to his temple and spoke in a slow, measured tone which left nobody under any impression she was bluffing. "We have no use for another clone, do we Lieutenant Keating...?".

"Not that I can think of," Finn shrugged following P'rel's lead.

White held his nerve, though his stomach lurched and his bowels twitched gaseously with the nervous knowledge that death may well be far closer than the Jem'Hadar cell. "You're Keating...." he said, looking up at the human. "So you must be Doctor P'rel...." he returned his stare to the Vulcan woman, still mere centimetres from his own face. "Tell me. Where is your Cardassian pet...?" he smiled, wagering that confidence and deflection were his only means of escape now.

"Watch it," Finn warned, having begun to feel protective over Silnan after all he had suffered because of her.

P"rel's arm twitched, the sum of every reserve of suppression and discipline was all that held the blade tip on the outside of the Admiral's skull, instead of sinking inches into it. "Get Silnan" P'rel whispered through the anger, to Keating, as she slowly rose to her feet. "Wait" she said, countermanding herself. "You work out how to blow the place. I'll get him..." she said gesturing to the consoles. "You." she said, with threat in her voice directed to White, "move and die"....

Finn nodded and then scowled at White before moving to the main control panel. How was he involved in all of this? She wondered and considered asking P'rel for more information, but now was not the time. The foreign-looking controls on the console took a few minutes to interpret. Theoretically, she could just trigger an overload and blow the cores but it was possible that there were safety measures and blocks in place to prevent that. Besides, there was no assurance that just an overload would obliterate the entire facility, and as far as Finn was concerned, every single piece of that facility needed to be converted to ash.

Leaving the room for a minute, P'rel quickly crossed the walkway to retrieve Silnan. Reaching him, she bent down to rouse him. He was colder than usual, and clearly in a bad way. "We need to go. Come on..." she said, rattling his body until his eyes blinked lazily open.

"P'rel...?" Silnan asked, through desperately parched lips. His arm was so sore, and he felt so weak. Everywhere hurt, and he barely had enough cognisance to control his eyes to look at her.

"Come on..." she repeated, grabbing hold of him as best she could and pulling him up to his feet. It wasn't easy, between her own worsening injury in her side and Silnan's complete battering, the pair of them could barely stand together.

Deliberately placing each foot in front of the other as they moved, Silnan felt marginally more awake as his heart rate rose from moving, he gripped the railings to the side of him as well as draping his severed arm around his mentor's shoulder as best he could. "Wh- what's happening?" he asked, pausing to draw in a slow breath full of chest pain.

It took Finn a couple of minutes to form a plan after interpreting all of the symbols laid before her. Energy surged from the cores in the room through many passages on the station. A chain reaction would do nicely to ensure everything was obliterated. Finn carefully traced the main power flows, coolant routes, and directional hubs before removing the emergency protocols and setting up a few key failure points along the energy route.

The pair arrived at the door to the control room, the deceptively small frame of the Vulcan holding up the almost giant, by comparison, Cardassian man. One eye still swollen shut, Silnan could barely see anything. P'rel guided them both towards the door threshold, with a typical clumsy Cardassian design there was a foot lip to the door. Placing one leg over the lip and into the control room, she braced to help Silnan's near deadweight body across.

"I'm ready to blow this joint when you are. Once I hit the trigger, we'll have just under one minute to get clear of the blast. After that, nothing will be left. There's a shuttle I noticed on the roof, I suggest we use that as our out," Finn stated.

"We're going home..." P'rel said, looking Silnan clearly in the eye and offering a reassuring smile. She took a brief moment to study his face, he was a survivor for sure; from the moment a dusty child's hand had poked up through the building wreckage on Cardassia IV, to this moment here and now. She was proud of him. Mirroring a calming technique she had used when was an infant, P'rel placed the fingers of her right hand against the side of his head and tapped rhythmically.

Smiling back at P'rel, Silnan also braced to lift his battered body over the door lip. It was barely a foot high, but even dragging his feet along a flat walkway had been struggle enough. "Home..." he mumbled back.

P'rel turned to Keating, just as she was about to pull Silnan over the threshold. "Alright, let's get read-" she was cut off as a bright white blue flash of light crashed into the doorframe, narrowly missing both her and Silnan by the tiniest of margins. Another one landed, and another, forcing them both to duck.

Looking at the commotion, White smiled, and forced himself to his good foot, making a quick start for the ladder.

Finn instinctively ducked as the incoming fire hit the room and caught White trying to escape. In a swift movement, she grabbed him by the collar with her good hand and pulled him to the ground before delivering a kick to the ribs. "Try that again and you'll be the next one to die," Finn stated plainly as she took cover and opened fire at their new enemies.

Silnan fell to his back away from P'rel as another round of what was clearly weapons fire landed at the threshold to the door. More and more hits came crashing in from all directions. He could hear aggressive cheering and the roar of charging soldiers, but was too pinned down to get a good look. From his position on the walkway, he could only see that the weapons fire was coming mainly from below. Hit after hit crashed around him, and he looked desperately to P'rel who had fallen backwards into the control room. Barely two metres separated them, but it was full of deadly weapons fire.

"Sil!" she called, throwing him one of the discarded Cardassian rifles from a dropped guard. "Keating blow it! Before we lose our chance!" she called, squirming into a position at the door to try and get a shot off from the second Cardassian rifle. "Sil! Get over here!" she called out, firing off randomly into the room below and the lateral doorways joining the walkways, trying to hit something that could give them time to regroup.

Silnan looked to P'rel and balled his eyes shut, firing off randomly in the opposite direction. He screamed with terror as he felt the weapons fire slamming into the walkway. He just heard his mentor's voice crying out 'no!' as he felt the floor give out beneath him. The walkway had sustained enough damage that it was collapsing, and he fell with the metal to the floor below, crashing hard and hearing the crack of any number of bones. Wincing through his only good eye, he saw the blurry form of at least a dozen Jem'Hadar swarming across the room, firing upwards at the doorway he had fallen from. He coughed and tasted blood, and realised he was unable to move, either from the weight of the walkway debris or from an injury he couldn't be sure.

P'rel looked on in horror beyond her control, as Silnan's own weapons fire along with the incoming fire finally destroyed the braces of the platform, and sent Silnan crashing to the floor below. With the walkway gone, she could now see Jem'Hadar soldiers moving across the room, firing off persistent suppressing fire at her position as they went. She squinted through the chaos, trying to find Silnan on the floor below, but found only a still body, not even giving any indication he had survived the fall.

"We have one minute!" Finn announced as she set off the chain reaction. She then turned around only to witness the tragedy that had unfolded. No. Not after all of this. He can't die now. She thought, as Silnan's body fell to the lower deck. Anger flooded her whole body. First, she had caused him to be tortured, and then when they had finally escaped he fell to his possible death after she had vowed to save him. The rifle butted up to Finn's shoulder and she unleashed fire, not even caring to take cover. Maybe there's still a chance. Maybe we can still save him,

"Keating!" called P'rel, launching herself out of cover and grabbing the engineer's uniform to yank her back. She pulled hard and forced Keating backwards, pulling them both to the floor as move Jem'Hadar weapons fire smashed into the walls dangerously close to them. "We have to go!" she shouted above the noise. Another quick look down and she could see that Silnan still hadn't moved. A quick look behind told her Admiral White had disappeared.

Silnan blinked slowly, he was in an oddly absent level of pain for the injuries he had previously received and from the fall. He strained his good eye upwards to see two sources of disruptor fire from the control room, and gasped a difficult breath in. They're coming for me... he thought to himself, feeling at least a small element of hope that Keating and P'rel were going to rescue him.

"What the hell is your problem?!" Finn screamed at the Vulcan. "We have to get to him! We can't leave him. I WON'T leave him!" She struggled against the Vulcan's grip. Trying desperately for her feet to get a grip on the floor and break free. She had let Silnan down once, she wouldn't do it again.

"He's gone!" P'rel shouted at Keating. The sound of whatever had been done to the power cores was getting louder, a sort of whirring up noise coupled with a heavy pulsing. She desperately wanted to get down to Silnan, even if he was dead, and bring him home....but that wasn't possible. It wasn't to be. There was no way they could get to him, let alone get back up, and certainly no way to do it in less than a minute. "Get to the shuttle, that's an order!" she shouted again, physically pulling Keating back and having to exert a considerable element of her superior Vulcan strength to overpower the emotionally desperate engineer. "Please! she called again, finally shoving Keating onto the ladder.

'Please'. The words struck her hard, snapping Finn out of the anguished trance. Perhaps it was because it was a word she had never heard the Vulcan utter. Or perhaps deep down, Finn knew it would do no good if they both were killed trying to save Silnan when he was likely already dead. Tears streamed slowly down her cheek as she let go of the idea of rescue and climbed farther up the ladder. Each rung cemented the fact that Silnan would not be coming home with them.

Taking one final look back, P'rel drew in a deep breath and rushed up the ladder behind Keating. They had barely seconds to get off the building.

---

Where are they? Silnan thought, as the Jem'Hadar began to clamber up the wreckage of the support braces for the walkway, completely paralysed he could only watch as the first few soldiers entered the control room above him from their rapid climb. The weapons fire had ceased, but the ground beneath him slowly began to rumble as a horrible noise grew louder. The cores were obviously overloading. Oh..., Silnan realised.

---

Finn wiped the tears from her eyes and peered out of the top of the hatch onto the roof. Fortunately, none of the Jem'Hadar had decided to stake out the top of the building, at least as far as she could tell. She looked down to see P'rel climbing up. "I don't see anyone guarding the roof, though it's possible they're just hidden. I'm going to make a break for the shuttle and start it up." She said before disappearing out of the hatch. There was no time to waste for concurrence.

Hiding behind the entry hatch to the shuttle, White pulled his phaser and slowly crept up behind the engineer called Keating. He would make her fly him to safety. Back to Thot Sen Tekk, where they could regroup and work out what to do next. As the engineer rapidly worked the console, he closed the distance and aimed the phaser at the back of her head.

Luckily the shuttle was a standard Starfleet configuration, so Finn plopped herself into one of the chairs and got to work on the startup sequence. Wait, Standard config means transporters, right? A lightbulb went off as she tried to pull up life signs, only to discover that the transporters had been removed from the craft. The last-ditch effort of transporting Silnan out, wouldn't work.

Ducking as a Jem'Hadar weapons discharge whizzed past her head, P'rel aimlessly fired off behind her as she barrelled for the shuttle. Hearing a beam make contact with something, she quickly rounded the doorway into the shuttle to find the Admiral stood behind an oblivious Keating, aiming right for her.

"Take off. Now...." he said, unaware of the Vulcan behind him.

"What?" Finn's face contorted in expression of confusion. That wasn't P'rel's voice, she thought before the realization hit her. The voice belonged to the admiral.

"Oh shut up..." P'rel snarled, cracking the rifle butt into White's head and sending him sprawling forward unconscious. The two women shared a brief look; achievement, sacrifice, pain...many emotions flowed between their eyes in that moment. "Let's go." P'rel said softly, almost as if she were giving permission to leave Silnan behind. As if she were trying to absolve the engineer of responsibility.

Finn gave a solemn nod and pressed the command to take off. She looked back once more as the shuttle left the surface, feeling relieved to have made it out alive. Yet right beside the relief stood anger and sadness. Emotions that she felt might be sticking around for a while. One thing was for sure, this experience had changed her both physically and mentally. Though not a clone, the Finn that arrived on this planet was not the same as the Finn that left.

---

Silnan's breaths grew harder to draw, his inability to move seemed to be extending to an inability to properly mobilise any muscles at all; as he lay perfectly still, his memories filled with warm images of his time with P'rel. From the moment he first saw the image of the woman coalesce into a defined shape, in a blurry haze of the Cardassian daytime as he was pulled from the rubble, to her discreet attendance when he passed the basic military academy courses...certainly he would have died a young child were it not for her. Yet, as he lay helpless and paralysed amongst metal as broken and twisted as his own bones, he couldn't help but feel a tragic loss over the life he was yet to live; there was a certain peace to the moment, he wasn't afraid nor in a panic, yet he was deeply mournful that there wouldn't be tomorrow. As the pulsing and whining grew louder and louder, he braced for the coming end. In those final moments, he thought to himself; I wish I had - .

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden and brilliant white flash.

---

"Kaiidth" P'rel whispered, taking only the briefest moments to feel the sheer pain, before suppressing it and bracing herself against the back of Keating's chair, where she still stood, as a powerful shockwave rammed hard into the shuttle's aft. Both women had achieved a great prize; the capture of the renegade Admiral White, yet both women had lost far more on Rondac than just a colleague, friend or mentee. For them both it seemed, part of them had remained with Silnan and would be forever gone. P'rel, in an uncharacteristic display, gave Keating's shoulder an affectionate squeeze before bending down to tend to the Admiral.