Star Trek: Vanguard: Declassified

by Dayton Ward

  A few dozen meters ahead of Bridy, the Klingon spy slid wildly down the dorsal hull toward the ship’s bow, which struck the far wall of the pit, launching him up and over the point of impact. He rolled through his hard landing on the gritty concrete and came up running.

  At the same moment, Bridy was going down with the ship.

  The imploding spaceframe collapsed under its own weight into a jumble of bent wreckage. Bridy scuttled clear of one crushing impact as the ship’s exterior scaffolding crashed down on top of it and followed it into its fiery grave. Then she realized she was lying atop an installed escape pod. Struggling back to her feet as the ship tilted aft, she fought her way across the disintegrating hull until she found a gap and dropped through it, into a half-walled corridor choked with gray smoke and dust that stung her eyes.

  She tumbled and lurched back the way she had come, taking half her strides on the deck and half across the bulkheads, until she found the escape pod. The ship had no power but she hoped that, like the emergency systems on Starfleet ships, the pod would have its own self-contained ejection system. She scrambled inside, and frantically pulled its hatch shut behind her. Then, with her hand poised on its launch handle, she looked out its tiny exterior viewport, waiting for a glimpse of sky so that she wouldn’t simply launch herself at high speed into a concrete wall. Through the flames and sooty smoke she caught the faintest hint of pale blue, and she pulled the ejection lever.

  The pod shot away from the spaceframe with a deafening bang, and the sudden acceleration slammed Bridy against its hatch. Everything seemed to move in slow motion—Bridy tumbled, the pod rolled, the viewport showed open air and dusty land—and then its systems powered up, and the sensation of free fall vanished. Its thrusters snapped on with a gravelly roar as it initiated its landing protocol—but then the pod crashed nose-first to the ground, and all its internal displays flickered and went dark. The inertial dampers failed, and Bridy covered her head with her arms as the pod bounced, rolled, and ricocheted across the starship-construction yard. Each collision rang the pod’s hull like a hammer on a church bell. Even after the pod finally skidded to a halt, the ringing continued inside Bridy’s aching skull.

  More than slightly dazed, Bridy triggered the pod’s hatch release. The heavy metal portal blasted away, leaving its aft portion completely exposed. She staggered out, blood-spattered and slightly charred, then lifted her tricorder only to find it smashed beyond repair. Well, that’s just great, she fumed.

  A variety of humanoids scrambled in her direction. Some looked as if they were coming to render aid. A pair of armed and armored Gorn looked intent on arresting her. She didn’t have time to deal with any of them. Pushing her way through a gauntlet of concerned humanoids chattering at her in languages she didn’t understand, she looked around, straining to pierce the bright haze and catch any sign of her target. She was just in time to see the Klingon hobbling out the far end of the industrial yard onto a busy main boulevard.

  Gotta give him credit, Bridy decided as she ran after him, he’s got stamina.

  The cries of sirens split the air behind her, and the next thing she heard were disruptor shots tearing past her. She didn’t bother to look back. It would only have slowed her down, and she had bigger problems to worry about than Gorn police.

  Ahead of her, the Klingon ducked and bobbed at a brisk pace through dense tangles of pedestrian traffic. He was no longer running, which suggested to Bridy that he didn’t think he was still being followed. He probably thinks I’m buried alive by now, she reasoned, slowing her pace and taking care to keep the Klingon in sight while keeping herself concealed. She exercised caution at each corner, searching for the Klingon’s reflection in storefronts before poking her head into the open to confirm his position.

  Within minutes he had led her into a sector of Tzoryp dominated by broad industrial buildings with offices stacked atop street-level warehouses. The sidewalks remained well populated with food vendors’ carts, queues of job-seekers outside several businesses, and doorways inhabited by members of the city’s pungently indigent underclass.

  On the far side of a narrow avenue, the Klingon ducked through a wide-open warehouse entrance and vanished inside its shadowy interior. Bridy tugged her hood forward to hide her face as she sidled into a sliver-thin alley between two buildings directly opposite the warehouse, whose signage consisted of symbols from a variety of alien languages. The only set of characters she even remotely understood were those written in tlhIngan’Hol. Her translation skills were far from perfect, but she was fairly certain the sign advertised a pest control service. She smiled. What a perfect cover, she realized. It gets them access to just about every place in the city and lets them have a license to store chemicals and low-grade explosives, and they even get to kill things from time to time.

  Shifting her gaze upward to the offices above the warehouse, Bridy saw movement in the window on the left corner. An older, gray-bearded Klingon stood up and beckoned someone. A moment later, the Klingon spy appeared, and the two clasped each other’s forearms in a fierce greeting. Then the older Klingon reached back toward his desk, and the window swiftly fogged gray and turned opaque.

  Not much time, Bridy realized. I need to get in there before they transmit that data off-world. She squinted into the shadowy warehouse. It was stacked high with crates, barrels, and bundles, and there was a large land vehicle with thick front tires and wide rear tracks. She counted four burly Klingons, all wearing civilian clothes but openly brandishing sidearms. Too many to ambush.

  Bridy dug into her pockets and made a quick inventory of her assets. Her phaser and communicator were gone, and her tricorder was smashed. All she had was a small pouch of local currency.

  Money in hand, she made a beeline to a massive, muscular alien lying half-awake in an open doorway nearby. She didn’t recognize his species but could tell by the lacerations on his knuckles and the empty bottle in his hand that he belonged to the great galactic fraternity of angry drunks. As she approached him, the bruiser looked up and growled at her through bared fangs.

  Undaunted, Bridy spoke softly in Federation Standard and prayed the lummox at her feet understood her. “Want to make some fast money?”

  The thug narrowed its eyes. “How much?”

  “Five hundred szeket. Cash.”

  Fangs bared as a threat transformed into a grin of avarice. “Who do you want me to kill?”

  “No one.” She dropped her pouch of Gorn crystal currency into the alien’s soiled lap and smiled. “I just want you to put on a show.”

  Ninety seconds later, none of the four Klingons from the warehouse seemed to care which alien had started the fight in front of their place of work. Apparently, all that mattered to them was that the two hulking brutes were pummeling each other with wild abandon, each pile-driver punch launching sprays of blood and broken teeth while the Klingons cheered and shouted encouragements.

  In fact, they were so thoroughly engrossed by the impromptu brawl that they didn’t pay the slightest attention to Bridy Mac as she slinked behind their backs and dashed through the dimly lit warehouse behind them. To her relief, the door to the rear stairwell was unlocked. She cracked it open, slipped through the gap, and eased it shut behind her. Then she took the stairs two at a time to the upper floor.

  Pausing at the top of the stairs, Bridy listened for voices or footfalls in the hallway beyond. All quiet. A quick peek confirmed the path to the corner office was clear. She stole out of the stairwell and skulked to the office’s door, which was open. Two voices from within, low and guttural, speaking in tlhIngan’Hol. She could translate only a handful of words and phrases from memory. Orions. Sensor data. Spy. Human. Secure. Beneath their conversation, she heard the distinctive feedback tones of a Klingon computer terminal.

  She barged through the doorway and moved in a straight line for the spy. He was standing between her and the desk, where the older Klingon, who Bridy presumed was the spy’s Imperial Intelligence handler, sat fac
ing a display that showed the contents of the data card inserted into his desktop reader.

  The spy grabbed a Klingon dagger off the desk and thrust it at Bridy. She dodged the attack, seized the man’s forearm, and twisted it until it broke. The handler bolted from his chair, drew a disruptor from his belt, and lunged toward an alert button on the far end of his desk. Using the spy’s trapped broken arm as an anchor, Bridy pivoted and caught the handler with a spinning kick that slammed him against the wall. Then she planted her feet, flipped the spy over her shoulder, and stomped on his solar plexus, taking the wind out of him.

  Confident the spy was down, Bridy charged the handler as he tried to aim his disruptor at her. She sidestepped the weapon’s muzzle, spun, and seized the handler’s arm. He shifted his weight in an unsuccessful bid to free his arm, and Bridy jabbed her elbow into his nose, which broke with a wet snap.

  The handler lurched forward, pulling Bridy with him. She grabbed the disruptor’s long barrel and wrenched the weapon from his grasp. He kicked her behind her left knee, and she stumbled backward. In the half second it took her to regain her balance, the handler slammed his fist down onto his desk’s alert button.

  A booming alarm reverberated throughout the warehouse.

  Bridy leapt at the handler, locked one arm around his throat, and pressed the disruptor’s muzzle to his temple. “One word out of you,” she said in broken, ungrammatical tlhIngan’Hol, “and you’ll have a cinder for a head.”

  Despite Bridy’s limited command of Klingon vocabulary and syntax, the handler seemed to get her point. He didn’t resist as she plucked the data card from his desk reader and tucked it into her pants pocket.

  Tremors of heavy machinery shook the floor and filled the office with a muted hum. The handler glared at Bridy from the corner of his eye. “The warehouse door is closed, and my men are coming. You’re trapped.”

  “Not likely.” She pistol-whipped the handler, let him fall to the floor, and then she pressed the transporter-recall button on her wrist.

  Nothing happened.

  Sprawled at her feet and clutching the bloodied back of his skull, the handler chortled. “Intruder alert . . . activates transport scrambler.” He bared his teeth at her. “As I said, human, you’re trapped.”

  From the hallway, Bridy heard the irregular percussion of running, booted feet. Even with two hostages, she knew that one disruptor against four would be very bad odds. She eyed the handler’s desk and considered turning it on its side to use as a barrier—and then she noticed a second button, right beside the one he had pressed. The markings above it were familiar, but their translation eluded her. She aimed at the handler. “What does ‘lon’ mean?” He glowered and said nothing. Bridy was about to threaten him when she remembered that the warehouse was full of toxic chemicals and low-grade explosives. Then her Klingon-language training kicked in, and she remembered why the word lon was important.

  She pressed the second button, and a different, higher-pitched alarm wailed from the building’s PA system. Then she flipped over the director’s desk, fired a short fusillade through the open doorway to slow down the approaching goons, and then crouched beside the handler. Teasing him with a smirk, she said, “It means ‘evacuate.’ And according to Klingon standard operating procedure, an evacuation alarm drops all shields and transport scramblers.” She punched the handler in the face, then keyed her transporter recall. Almost immediately, she felt the pull of a transporter’s annular confinement beam. “Adios,” she said, flipping the handler a one-finger salute just before she started to dematerialize. “It’s been fun.”

  She vanished just in time to avoid the barrage of disruptor fire that blasted the handler’s desk into smoldering splinters, and materialized in a golden swirl of energy inside the transporter pod aboard the Dulcinea, grateful that the rubindium-transponder transporter recall bracelet issued to her by Starfleet Intelligence had, for once, worked as promised.

  She dashed out of the cocoonlike alcove as Quinn—scuffed, tattered, bruised, and bloody—scrambled into the ship’s main compartment via the starboard ramp. They collided, locked eyes, and declared in unison, “Time to go!”

  9

  Ganz narrowed his eyes at the viewscreen image of Kajek, whose Nausicaan visage he found inscrutable. “He got the drop on you?” The Orion furrowed his green brow in confusion. “You’re sure it was Quinn?”

  “Absolutely certain.” A hint of amusement crept into his tone. “He wants me to give you a message. He says Zett came after him on a personal vendetta and got what he deserved. My life was spared to prove Zett’s death wasn’t personal.”

  A grim chuckle rumbled deep inside Ganz’s chest. He shook his head and muttered, “Dead or alive, that human never ceases to surprise me.” He picked up a decanter of green Orion rum, removed the stopper, and refilled his glass.

  Kajek half suppressed a low growl. “So, what now? Shall I pursue Quinn and his woman? Or wait for you to send someone after me?”

  “Neither.” Ganz sipped his drink, which was in equal measures sweet and tart. “His story has the ring of truth to it. I know Quinn; he’s not the vengeful type, but Zett was. If Zett forced a showdown and lost, it was his own fault.”

  “What about his ship?”

  “Spoils of war. Let Quinn have it.”

  “And the second half of my fee?”

  “Was payable upon Quinn’s death, which you failed to accomplish.” Sensing the bounty hunter’s rising temper, Ganz held up one hand to cut off Kajek’s protest. “However, as I’ve canceled the contract, I offer you one half your remaining fee as compensation for your invested time and effort.”

  The Nausicaan dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “I accept.”

  “Good. Now forget about Quinn. I need you back here.”

  “I will return as soon as possible.” Kajek terminated his transmission without wasting time on such pointless niceties as saying good-bye. The viewscreen on Ganz’s desktop went dark, and he switched it off.

  On the other side of Ganz’s office, Neera lounged in an alluring pose across the long sofa. She teased him with a smirk. “Such restraint. Are you actually learning to cut your losses?”

  “I’m learning to adjust my priorities.” Ganz stood and walked to the open doorway of his balcony that overlooked the Omari-Ekon’s gaming floor. The thumping bass of primal rhythms pulsed from the traveling casino, and the air was sweet with fruit-scented smoke. He breathed it all in . . . and then frowned at the scene’s sole discordant note, its one foul odor, its singular blemish: Diego Reyes, who paused in his nonchalant stroll past the dom-jot tables to look up over his shoulder at Ganz and crack a cold, mirthless smile. “We have bigger problems,” Ganz said as he turned back toward Neera.

  “Be patient. Reyes is only a temporary annoyance.”

  “He challenges my authority daily.”

  Neera shrugged. “So? Your authority is just an illusion, anyway.”

  Ganz absorbed the blow to his ego and continued. “Regardless, that illusion is vital to our control over those we employ. Every time Reyes defies me and you forbid me to react, you undermine my power aboard this ship.”

  “A small sacrifice.” The sable-haired mistress of the Omari-Ekon made a show of studying her immaculately manicured fingernails. “Until we have enough wealth and power to shift our operations off these traveling circuses and onto worlds across the Federation and Klingon Empire, we need to court the goodwill of the powers that be. For now, that means we can’t risk giving Starfleet any reason to revoke our docking privileges here at Vanguard.”

  It took all of Ganz’s limited self-control not to point out that while Neera was the power behind the throne aboard the Omari-Ekon, most of his underlings were not aware of their arrangement. Which meant, if he was so inclined, he could order his men to do away with Neera whenever the mood might strike him. Of course, there would be grave consequences when the syndicate captains to whom Neera answered learned of her disappearance, but Ganz was fairl
y certain a generous payoff would be sufficient to assuage their desire for retribution.

  “At the very least, let’s ban him from the gaming floor.”

  The suggestion seemed to amuse Neera. “Why?”

  “Because he keeps on winning.”

  Neera smirked. “It’s your own fault for offering him a line of credit. At any rate, banning him now would make no sense: he’s up. The odds favor the house. So, let him keep playing until he loses.”

  “I’m not sure he knows how.”

  Neera got up and walked over to the doorway. “No one draws winning hands forever.” She draped herself over Ganz’s right arm. “Sooner or later, everyone loses. The trick is to keep your customers playing until it’s their turn.”

  “And if our turn comes first?”

  “That’s why we rig the games, darling.”

  Down below, Reyes bladed through the crowd on his way toward the exit. Much as Ganz tried to ignore the human, he couldn’t stop staring daggers at the man’s back. His hands curled into fists. “We can’t be rid of him soon enough.”

  “All in good time, love. I know you resent him for pushing you around when we first came here, but you need to take a lesson from Zett’s fate: don’t let it become personal. Right now, having Reyes on board is good business. When it becomes bad business, we’ll put an end to it. I promise.”

  10

  Quinn’s voice echoed from the PA system inside the Dulcinea’s cargo hold. “Ask and ye shall receive: I’ve got the Endeavour on the secure channel.”

  Bridy stepped to a nearby comm panel and thumbed the reply button. “Patch it down here, would you?” Because her security clearance was several levels higher than Quinn’s, her superiors at SI insisted she exclude him from classified briefings. She took Quinn at his word when he promised not to eavesdrop on her.