Chapter XXII: Taking Survey
The lower part of the mine was decidedly more labyrinthine than they had encountered in the upper portion, significantly slowing their search progress. K'vot scouted on ahead, with his better eyesight, his palm beacon illuminating the passage. Semil trailed behind, eyes affixed to his tricorder, dependent on the limited range of the readings with his poor eyesight.
"There's going to be another three-way junction up ahead. Go left."
"And you expect me to believe you're not directing us in circles?"
"Left, I said." Semil was firm, despite his resolve beginning to waver in the cold, damp, tiredness. He had been using the tricorder to make an ad hoc map as they went, but did not feel like explaining himself or the basic common sense of this measure to K'vot.
Not prioritizing the time, he estimated it might already be daybreak on the surface. He imagined that an unengineered species might even be feeling some pangs of hunger after the hours they had spent in the mine, slightly increasing his respect for the Colonel.
Their left turn made, Semil's tricorder beeped and buzzed, the Vorta working to make sense of the readings.
"You have something?"
"I'm not sure." Semil twiddled several controls on the interface. "The turbidium concentrations here are quite high. It's hard to be certain..." Semil paused. "It could be a power source. Weak. Just a few meters down." The Vorta pointed along the direction of their path.
Semil scurried to keep up, as K'vot trodded ahead, wielding his own tricorder to get a fix.
He finally caught up to the Klingon, crouched beside an old antigrav palette, slumped to the side of the mineshaft, teetering on the side of a boulder, its powercells long since corroded to dust.
"This... is not as old as the rest of the mine."
As K'vot inspected the antigrav, Semil cast his palm beacon around the cavern. There was no obvious cargo for the palette next to it, making it odd that it had been discarded in such a fashion. Maybe...
The crates tumbled onto their sides down the hallway caught Semil's eyes immediately. The Vorta rushed over, stubbing his toe on an unseen outcropping. He paid the slight flash of surprising pain no mind, he was so intent on his target.
K'vot looked up to notice the Vorta's attention had been duly taken, and slowly made his way over to join Semil, who was crouched down, prying open the crates.
In the first, a random assortment of small equipment spilled out onto the cavern floor, as the cratelid gave way. The second yielded similar junk.
Semil gave a frustrated grunt, which surprised K'vot. In all his dealings with the Vorta, watching over him, monitoring him, now working with him - K'vot noted in Semil the careful, deliberately shielded countenance of his people. It was uncommn, if not rare - to see Semil express an honest emotion, even as briefly as this.
Semil resumed scanning the cave floor with his palm beacon, not content to give up.
A third crate lay further along the mineshaft corridor. Upright, but obscured by dust and rock - a partial collapse of the wall, perhaps. The Vorta shuffled over to it, in undisguised excitement, with perhaps insufficient regard to safety and caution, K'vot noted.
Clearing away the dust and gravel from its surface, Semil beheld the otherwise indescript crate with a brief pause. K'vot couldn't tell whether he was fabricating the drama of the moment, when Semil cautiously undid the fasteners and opened the lid.
Inside, rows of canisters were tightly packed upright. Several deep perhaps. A considerable fraction were dark and unlit, randomly peppered among others with still blinking lights. "Their battery capacity is rated to several decades. It's a marvel as many of them have stayed operational without the master cryonic unit."
With that, K'vot immediately understood that their mission had finally succeeded. "How many are still working?"
Taking survey, Semil found his mind unable to do the basic arithmetic. "Enough."
